End
by kiaronna
Summary: It's Summer's end, and I don't want him to go. So I beg him to take me; and my boring, unimportant, uninfluencing little chicken girl life is pulled into something bigger, darker, and more horrifying than anything I've ever known. I don't own HM.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: Hi, and welcome to End!! Welllll... To anybody who doesn't know me, this is actually my third story in my series. My other two are Exterior and Goddess, and though it's not required, I definitely suggest you read them first for the best experience, because I will most definitely make a few references to them in this story. Umm... This is also the only long-fic I've posted on this site that is in first person, so if I make a mistake, please correct me. And here's a warning; there WILL be original characters in this, as well as places other than Mineral Town. I might even mention Forget-Me-Not Valley. Or I might make places up. Anyways, this story isn't held in Mineral Town. Maybe later, they'll come back. But for the majority of the story, they will not be in the real Mineral Town. You heard me. The REAL one. All right, I've blabbed enough. Please go on and read the story!!_

**End**

1

_..._

_No matter the steps I take, the air I breathe, the smiles I give, nothing changes.  
Like footprints in the sand on the beach, I will eventually be washed away. My influence is so small.  
I've watched people become amazing, substantial, necessary. I need them. The world needs them.  
I am not needed.  
Have I ever been?_

_..._

"I'll see you next Summer, Popuri."

That was the simple statement that, every Summer, destroyed me. Ever since Kai had first arrived in the village, I had adored him; helped him in my minor ways, spent time with him, bought items at his shop and constantly defended his image where my brother attempted to destroy it.

But I never got anything from him except for hugs and smiles.

I don't mean to complain. I love every embrace, every ruffle of my hair, every bright grin. But it's like I've got a second older brother. A fake older brother. One that doesn't adore me and will leave me if he has reason to.

But that summer, it was too much. One too many rejection that finally tore me apart.

My best friend Jill had left me two falls ago- she had a heavenly calling that was impossible to ignore. Which, for her sake, I will not talk about here. I could handle losing the one wonderful friend I had in the entire village. Kind of.

But it was yet another disruption in my normal life that threw me shakingly close to the edge. Rick finally confessed to his girlfriend, Karen, in Spring. I have nothing against them; I'm very happy that they FINALLY got together after years and years of childhood crushes and flirting. But my brother used to obsess over me. A lot. I pretended to hate it, and it was annoying sometimes.

But imagine. Someone who has always been watching your every move, keeping you from all dangers and holding your hand your entire life, suddenly has a new person to take care of and kiss and love.

But it's not as if Rick can be blamed for what is happening now.

It's not his fault that I'm locked in this tiny room, on a violently rocking ship, my hands and throat raw from banging on the door and whispering to myself in the salty, musty air.

Alone.

I suppose that if there's anyone I can attach blame to, it's Kai.

* * *

"Kai!!" I flung myself at him, and he caught me, twirling me around, his strong tan arms lifting me up. But his face, as usual, remained blank.

My Kai was as mysterious as the sea. Or at least, that's the romantic way Mary would have put it if she was writing a book, holed up in that tower of hers.

"You're leaving?"

"I leave every year, Poppie," he responded, smiling widely. "So... I'll see you next Summer."

"Promise, Kai?"

He set me down slowly on the dock, turning his face to the boat that was waiting for him.

"...Sure, Popuri."

That was not the way he was supposed to answer.

In all the years that I had known him, he had always quickly said, "Promise?! Of course I'll be back!" and flashed that charming smile at me and any woman who happened to be in the vicinity.

Because we had this little separation every year. It had become a ritual: I came to say goodbye to him, cheerily waving from the docks until the ship chugged out of sight. And beforehand, he would always promise to return. But not this year.

My breath stopped in my throat.

'Kai... Not returning next summer?' The thought made my stomach flip. And not from joy or nervousness- from pure terror. Kai was my summer confidante, my best friend (especially now that my other was gone), and my first and only love.

My mixed feelings must have been showing, because he patted my head, nervously pulling with his free hand on his purple bandanna.

"Listen, Popuri..."

Oh, Goddess, no.

'Calm down, Popuri,' I told myself. I tried to conjure a romantic image. Him confessing his undying love to me, him taking my hand and kissing it before he left, promising to return and next time, to take me with him on a journey around the world. Like a prince from some fairytale I had read when I was little.

But the way he bit his lip and tugged on his bandanna like it was full of poisonous snakes made me think otherwise.

"You're going to come back." My voice sounded small and childish, even to me. Harvest Goddess, I hate it when I sound like a child. Because even though I look like one, I most definitely am not. "You are. You're going to come back."

He sucked in a breath. "...That depends, actually."

"You have to come back, Kai!"

He winced, and I realized that I was yelling.

"Popuri. It's not my decision to make."

I wanted to scream and stomp my feet and yell some more. But that was a temper tantrum, and that was... For little kids. I was sure that Kai would not like to return to a surly, clingy child who wanted nothing more than attention.

So I got quiet again.

"I'll try and come back. But some things have come up, and I... Might not be allowed to."

I took a deep breath. "...It's alright. I've survived three months without you. I'm sure I can live for four more." I tried to make a joke, but I knew that I sounded pathetic. My laugh was hollow, and so was my heart.

"It wouldn't just be for the next summer."

There was a yelling of the boatman for him to get a move on.

I felt as if somebody had just hit me in the stomach with a hoe. The breath was knocked out of me, and I could hardly comprehend a single vulgar word the sailor was yelling.

He wouldn't be coming back.

Ever.

"Popuri. Popuri!" He deftly waved a hand in front of my face.

I wanted to cry, but I knew I shouldn't. If he wasn't coming back, then I wanted the last sight he had of me to be a smiling, laughing, beautiful woman who he would regret leaving for a lifetime.

Oh, what a joke that was.

"I... I..."

So much for a prince come to take me away from humble beginnings and show me the world. And I felt like, even though I had probably spent more of my life with him than I had with chickens, that I didn't know Kai at all. He was still a mystery, a dark skinned handsome traveler who always wore his trademark bandanna.

Why couldn't he take me with him? Why?

And then that thought became real.

Yes. Why couldn't he?

"Kai!" I was hardly thinking about the future then- I was just desperate to do anything, try ANYTHING, to have more time with Kai. Because he was too wonderful, too precious, for me to let go of. "Take me with you! Please!"

Even he went slack-jawed at my sudden plan.

But then his face darkened, his voice deepened, and he grabbed my arm. "You don't mean that, Popuri. You don't want to meet my family, see what I've seen. Please don't. I like you, Popuri." A deep breath, but even at the statement, I did not feel satisfied. "...Enough to not want you to come."

"I don't care! I'll try not to be troublesome... But please, I want to come with you, Kai... I don't want to have you leave!"

"You can't." But I could see uncertainty in his eyes. If I had ever believed that Kai wanted to stay with me, it was now. Because even though we had been together for so long, I don't think he loved me yet. If I had ever believed that he loved me, it was now, when he was looking at me with real thought, wondering.

"Kai. We've got to leave. You need to arrive by tonight, or else your-" The boatman again.

"Let him be," Kai snarled back, and I could see the sudden change in him. The man shot him a glare, but let it drop.

"Either bring the girl and come on the ship now, or leave the girl and get on the ship now. Quickly, before I make the decision for you."

Suddenly, there were strong arms around me, and I was being wrenched up the lowered walk into the ship. There was no time for confusion, no time for regret.

But the second I was dumped onboard by Kai, and the ship was rocking, and Mineral Town was fast moving away, I could see my mistake.

I could see my horrible, horrible mistake.

But not for long, because even my panicked time on the upper deck of the ship got cut short.

"Kai. Even though I said you could, I cannot believe you brought that little girl with you."

Kai shrugged, tilted his head and carelessly shook it.

"I wanted to."

The boatman chuckled. "Fine, then. But remember." His face hardened. "We don't welcome outsiders. You know that. It'll be difficult for her to incorporate our way of life."

The conversation was too complex for me. New information, a Kai that wouldn't even stand next to me or look at me, and no idea where I was heading was making me regret my decision more and more by the second.

My stomach was churning, my head hurt, and I felt sick. What had I done? And what had Kai done...?

I raced to the side, sure that I would hurl. Instead, I had a clear view of a city ahead of us. Though right now it was a speck in the horizon, I could imagine it as clearly as anything. Tall, pointed buildings, with fifty floors and elevators. And not a chicken in sight.

The city. I had never been to The City, as commonly referred to by my father and the other Mineral Towners. I had never even left our little island village. I had never been more than five miles from home before.

And yet here I was, looking at this gorgeous city of silver, winking at me from a distance, the loud noises kept at bay only by the length of water between it and I. I felt that if I reached out, I could touch it. This was why I was here; that glorious thing on the horizon that called to me and any adventurer.

"We're going... there?" My voice was an awed whisper, but they both heard me perfectly.

...And ignored me.

"Maria is waiting on the docks. Go up and turn on the signal light to inform her it's us." Finally, finally, he turned his gaze to me. "As for your little girl, I believe you should put her in the hold until you tell your sister the situation."

I suddenly wished he had not thought of me.

In the hold? In the hold, where it was dark and lonely... My stomach protested, and I leaned over the side once more.

What kind of boatman put one of his passengers (a sea-sick one, too) beneath decks? ...Besides, Kai would never put me down there. He'd want me on deck- he'd brought me, after all. Didn't he want me? For once, didn't he?

"I would really rather stay up he-"

My answer was brought by the swift feeling of being thrown over Kai's shoulder once more.

"I can walk, you know!" I protested weakly, but my brain refused to stop thinking of the tan arms wrapped around me.

"Quiet, please, Popuri."

As soon as I was sat on a barrel, he turned, ready to leave and lock the door behind him.

"Kai!" It was a gasp, and a pathetic one, but it was better than the sob of sudden terror I felt. He was going to leave me down here, without telling me a thing. Without saying a word to me. Without caring that I wanted to go HOME.

...I wanted to go home. I had dreamed of that silver city before; but I hadn't thought of arriving there held inside a dark room, wet and unaware of what exactly was going on.

He stopped, hand on the doorknob, clutching it tightly.

"I'm confused," I whimpered, and almost against my own will, I whispered one of my many thoughts. The thought that came out was the one I was now sick over, the one I was regretting and questioning. "...And I want to go home."

What a foolish, wimpy child I was. I had asked him to take me; but why was he even crueler to me when I was here? Why couldn't he, for once, show that he loved me too?

If he loved me too.

I had made a decision the moment I asked Kai to take me with him. But I was backing out of it faster than I had thought possible.

"You can't." He turned back around, ruffled my hair as an afterthought, then quickly turned and walked out.

They couldn't keep me down here if I didn't want to go, could they?

I stood, confusion flowing through me. I felt cold; and my heaving stomach had not given up its efforts to throw away any food it had.

I tried the door.

It was locked.

And as I heard the voice of Kai and the boatman outside, speaking in low, quiet tones, with sounds and accents I had never heard before, I realized. It came slowly, but surely. And though I didn't have proof, and I didn't know hardly anything about this voyage, I knew.

I was not a passenger.

I was a prisoner.

And I had brought it upon myself.

* * *

_A/N: I don't want to ruin what I hope is a good beginning, but I just want to put in a quick note here. Thanks for reading through the entire first chapter! Hugs to all of you! And more hugs and smiles if you review!! I also want to thank anybody who supported me throughout my previous stories; Ekoaleko, Moonlit Dreaming, Trying To Breakaway, Awesome Rapidash, Flaming Black Skull, and basically just about anybody who's ever reviewed. Here, finally, is the next story! Again, thanks a ton for reading. I hope you enjoyed it!!_


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Whew! Finally! That took forever to squeeze out of me. I'm sorry!!! I guess it's sorta long... 5,000 words and all. I'm really sorry. But in case anybody can possibly forget, the life-sucking finals are VERY soon. Heck, I have a Spanish final in two days... Man, I'm doomed. In case anybody else has the awful finals (which I'm guessing a ton do), I guess this is a nice little surprise in the midst of major studying. Woot! Merry Christmas, everybody. Or Happy Holidays. Whatever you celebrate, just be glad you don't have school for two weeks. Yay! Anyways, here we go. A nice, depressing little chapter of End. With lots of confused Popuri, mysterious relatives, and my first almost-romantic scene in End! Wheee. Thank you sooooooooo much to everybody who reads my stories. You. Are. All. Awesome._

End

2

* * *

_If I said that I loved you, would it make any difference at all? Could that simple statement make the stars shine brighter, the world spin slower, the birds sing louder? Would it make a difference to anyone but you and me?_

_Would it even make a difference to you?_

_I don't know. I don't know if the universe will change because I say that I love you. So I won't._

_Even though I know that it's the truth._

* * *

I didn't know how I fell asleep. I thought it would never end, the nightmare. I lay there in the dark hold, the salty smell of the open sea stinging my nose, the boat rocking violently through the ocean to the city.

But now the boat gently swayed, and for some reason the smell of salt had been replaced with... Smoke. I didn't know what else to call it. It wasn't like the smoke from a fire, but it was smoke all the same, and it smelled almost like kerosene gas from our lamps back home.

Back home.

My stomach trembled, and I felt sick. That's right. I wasn't in Mineral Town. I was hundreds of miles away, locked in a dark hold in a ship, all because I foolishly held onto a man I loved and thought I knew, and begged him to take me along.

I rose to my feet awkwardly, my body still rocking even though the boat wasn't. I managed to stumble to the hold door, and then I heard it.  
There it was- that strange, exotic language again that I had never heard before. I'd never heard ANY other language before, actually; Mineral Town contained only English, light-skinned families. Won was the closest we had to anybody out of that category. And then there was Kai.

My eyes filled with tears. My Kai that I loved was up there, speaking in that tongue, talking to somebody else, completely out of my reach. Maybe he had been untouchable all along, the whole time I knew him. He left every summer, and this was the one summer he had said... That he might not come back. And I, like an idiot, had begged him to take me with him.

I heard footsteps nearing the door. Light, clicking footsteps on the wet wood. I stepped back, and the door was pulled open. Blinking my red eyes, I gazed out into the bright light of day.

The most beautiful woman I had ever seen stood there, her complexion slightly darker than Kai's, red lips full, curly dark hair that would be wild and tangled if it wasn't on such a perfect woman. The blackest eyes were glaring straight at me from under long lashes.

Her eyes narrowed in scrutiny, before she made a comment out of the side of her mouth. The boatman crossed his arms and pointed to Kai.  
I felt like a little girl. Compared to this woman, and these dark people. I was a little girl, and my parents were saying things in a complicated adult language that I didn't understand. They were talking about me, they were arguing, and I was helpless.

She demanded something, eyes blazing.

Kai murmured a word.

She looked about to slap him. She hissed a few sentences.

Then, those black eyes were on me again. Slowly, a smile came over her perfect lips. "Popuri," she murmured. "What a cute name. And such a cute little girl."

A cute little girl.

Yes, compared to this woman, I was nothing but that.

"You don't have to put up a farce," Kai said coldly. "She may look like a child, but she's not a fool. She can tell you're not the beautiful goddess men mistake you for."

"Kai," she said, smiling brilliantly at him. I felt blinded. "If you do not close your mouth, then I will close it for you, dear little brother." She turned back to me, and I trembled under her dark eyes. "Honey, I'm Maria. Very nice to meet you."

Suddenly, her previous statement hit me. Looking up at the beautiful dark skinned woman, staring at Kai, I felt my tired mind make the connection.

She was Kai's sister.

My stomach heaved, and I stumbled out the door past them to throw the little food they'd given me into the water below.

We had left the city after retrieving Maria, and I hadn't even seen it. Apparently, they were all used to this- a rocking boat, a silver city, dark skinned beautiful relatives that made chicken girls feel young. They hardly cared about a silly thing like a city. After they left me, locking me up again in the hold, they talked deep into the night. All I could do was listen to Kai's voice through the wooden deck, hard and slurred and softer.

I'd never understood Kai. I'd attempted to. I'd watched him and hung onto him for years. But there was always a boundary I couldn't cross, some invisible force that propelled me backwards when I tried to make contact with anything deeper than the traveller on the beach.

As always, a wall separated us.

* * *

_I was bouncing._

_The person beneath me laughed and bounced me higher on his knee._

_"Up!" I called, delighted._

_My mother, standing in the kitchen, just laughed. Rick did as well; this was a time before he had to fill in for my father, before he had to look after me constantly, had to consider each movement I made before deciding if it was dangerous or harmless._

_I tilted my chubby pink head up, to look into bright blue eyes as clear as the sky. Laugh lines creased their edges, and I knew who it was._

_"Daddy!" The bouncing stopped as he hugged me close._

_"Yes, my little Popuri?"_

_"I love you," I squealed._

_"And I love you," he cooed back, patting my fluffy hair. "I love my entire family!"_

_With one arm, he hooked my mother around the waist and pulled her over gently, and with the other he ruffled Rick's blonde hair._

_"You guys are the best. Someday, far off, when you're bigger, everything will be different. You two will be married to wonderful people-" he winked at me then "-And your mom and I will be sitting around here caring for our chickens, getting old."_

_"The chickens!" Lillia gasped suddenly. "I didn't feed them yet!" Tugging herself out of the family embrace, she scurried off to take care of the feathered creatures. Lovingly setting me on the ground and giving Rick one more pat, Rod, my father, walked out the door to go visit Zack._

While the younger me was completely content to go play dolls and run around our yard the rest of the day, I couldn't help but look back at the memory with wistfulness... The days before Mom started having trouble getting up, before that doomed visit to the Clinic to see the two doctors, the day when they told us she was slowly going to lose her ability to walk. Before that, we were just a family, probably the most united in Mineral Town. Karen argued, Mary's dad was often off exploring, Ann's father was still in a state of depression over the death of his wife, the little Doctor's parents were always working, and saucy Aja was always tired of her family's disagreements. We were the family in Mineral Town that was always in a state of harmony, raising our chickens. We were the normal ones. Then Dad left, and the world became a huge regret, a neverending circle of "what if"s or "maybe"s.

Kind of like how it was now.

* * *

The boat came to a stop, and once again it was calm and serene. The boat swayed much less. Suddenly, the hold door was thrown open.

"Well, jeez, Kai, I didn't know you were such a romanticist!" A cheery voice pierced through the darkness, and then there was a girl standing there smiling at me like we were best friends, orange head cocked, green eyes sparkling. "Awww, she looks so sweet and innocent."

The girl's bright smile felt strange and awkward. I hadn't had anyone smile at me in almost two whole days. Maria smiled at me, but not like this girl. This smile was real.

"Nice to meet you, Popuri!" She grinned. "I bet you want to get off this boat, huh? Come on, follow me. I'm Caitlin."

She lead me out of the hold, and down a board.

My eyes burned, unaccustomed to the light, but the grip on my hand was solid and cool. "So, then. He knows you're coming, because I told him. So don't worry if he knows you. Oh, and Popuri?" She didn't even wait for an answer before continuing on. "Try not to mess with Kai, okay? He's stressed right now. But it's all right, because we're going to hang out. Just until Kai explains why he brought you."

"Um... Thank you." I managed a smile, but my head hurt. Solid land felt wrong, and I had no idea what she was talking about. But her last sentence got me, and the way she said it makes me feel seasick all over again.

'_Just until Kai explains why he brought you.'_ The way she said it was accusing, even coming from someone so nice. Like Kai wasn't supposed to bring me. Like Kai wasn't allowed to bring me.

The dock was completely deserted, I finally noticed. Maria was long gone, disappeared into the huge white tile building in front of me. The boatman and Kai were exchanging words and tying the ship to the dock. Kai was pulling on his bandanna again, in his nervous way, his face a dark cloud of emotions. I'd seen them do this same act a thousand times in Mineral Town, but this was different. The boatman was hostile, and Kai was less than happy. I must have watched him for a minute before I realized that he was looking everywhere but at me.

My head and heart were pounding, and I felt sore all over, as everything I realized on the boat trip clicked into place, reality hitting me too fast and too strong.

Kai was ignoring me. He took me with him, as some sort of last second add on. I didn't belong here. Everyone I'd met so far in Kai's life had shown me that. Even Kai himself had shown me that. My tanned traveller, my summer crush that made me happier than anything, wasn't here any more. The person left was so different, so changed, that I could hardly see a similarity.

My eyes started to tear up, and I felt like a stupid little kid. I actually believed that because I begged my Prince Charming to take me away to someplace foreign and exciting, I would start a new life, and Kai would love me. That's forever from the real truth.

"Hey, hey." Caitlin turned around, looking at me with a strange curiosity. "Man, can Kai pick 'em. What's wrong? Are you still seasick?"

I shook my head, and wiped my eyes on my dress sleeve.

"Homesick? That's totally okay too, you know... I mean, never getting to go home again is pretty bad."

My head jerked up. "Never... Getting to go home?!"

What about Rick? What about my mom, what about May and Stu and--

"There's no point in freaking out now," she says, reaching around her neck and pulling out some weird metallish card with a lot of markings on it. She runs it through a cut-out hole near a door, and suddenly, we're inside the white building. "You aren't going back, not now and not ever."

My heart stopped.

I was not going home.

Because of one decision, I was never going to see my family again. I was never going to take care of a chicken again. I was never going to marry Kai and get him to stay with us. I was not going to make Rick and Karen get married.

When my mother died, I wasn't going to be there.

I was going to be trapped here, hated by Kai and yanked around by people I hardly knew. Dark people, beautiful people, cheerful people that would be my friend if they weren't already attached to whatever this is.

Caitlin pulled me forwards, past rows of beeping machines that look like T.V.'s, with numbers flashing across them.

"The meeting room's just past here. He wants to see you, see if you're of any use to us." She snorted. "I seriously doubt it, no offense. But you're just a chicken farmer, aren't you?"

I was. Now I don't know what I am.

I was pushed through another set of doors. It was almost dark in the room, besides the soft glow of one machine upon a man's face.

If he had a bandanna, he'd look just like Kai. He had the same chin, the same black hair, and worst of all, that heart melting mischevous grin Kai used to give me. When I was still an innocent girl thinking he was my prince. The Almost-Kai opened his mouth, and out poured information I could never understand.

"Popuri Chite, daughter of Lillia Chite and Rod Chite. Sister to Coded #346, best friend of the now Heavenly Being #73. Has no abilities to speak of." He surveys me with cold eyes.

Coded #346? Heavenly Being #73? I was silent, but my body was slowly turning to ice. Piece by piece. And if he knocked me too hard, I'd shatter.

"Consistently plays with Dark Presence #679. Former best friend of Heavenly Being #52. Acquaintance to Seer #1, 490. Neighbor to former carrier of Heavenly Being #64. You know, I can go on and on. Your little town is quite the hotspot for mystical activity." He folded his hands in his lap. "And you, Popuri, consistently befriend and care for these people. The most powerful ones are directly linked to you. Yet according to everything Kai has ever told me, you have no powers. You don't even realize what these people can do."

I wanted to step away from this man, away from his strange words and the way he was looking at me. Like Gray sometimes looked at his creations. Burning in those eyes was the urge to shape me and make me better, to take me apart and see why I wasn't ticking the way he wanted me to.

But suddenly, there was a hand pressed into my back, another on my shoulder. Protecting me.

"There's no amazing riddle here. Popuri is just a girl. You're not getting her involved in this."

He shrugged and smiled. "Kai, you're the one who brought her here. I'm just trying to figure out how to utilize her."

"Popuri is mine." The hand on my shoulder tightened. "You're not touching her."

I had heard him say that before, in my dreams. To some other suitor, to some other man who wanted me. Then we'd ride off into the sunset, and I would know he shared my feelings. Had he said those words in Mineral Town, I would be attempting to kiss him right now. Those were words I had wanted to hear for years. But now, they were being said for a completely different purpose.

I felt like crying again. Besides being confused, that was the only emotion I had felt on this island so far.

Even though he had said those words to protect me against something HE had brought me to, I still felt that warmth inside me. For the first time since the boat trip, I felt like he wanted me. Like there was hope.

"That's fine for now." The man turned back to the glowing screen. "But you already know this, Kai. Everyone here has a purpose. We don't keep orphaned little children out of the goodness of our hearts. Speaking of orphaned children, please inform Caitlin that she's needed to go retrieve Dark Presence #698. We've let him run around wreaking havoc for a little too long. If we don't catch him now, the government could get smart for once and recruit him."

Kai and I stood there, unmoving.

"You're dismissed, Kai."

We still did not budge.

"Kai." His voice was a warning.

"Tell me you won't use her when I'm gone. You may be a failure as a father, but you can do something for your kid for once in your greedy life."

The hand on my back was tense, the one on my shoulder tightening to the extent that it gave me a dull, throbbing pain.

"I already let you bring your little girl here, didn't I? I've let you have your fun. You weren't supposed to fall in love, but I let you. I let you go back to that town year after year instead of sending someone else. I've already granted you favors too many. And look what they've gotten me. A ridiculous little girl with pink hair. Your favors are used, Kai. I'll do whatever I wish with what little personal life you have in the form of a girl."

He looked down at the screen, and the conversation was done. My future, whatever I had here, was undecided and in danger. I would worry, but before I could, Kai whipped us both around. He steered me out the door, following close behind, then shoved me into Caitlin's waiting form. The second time he touched me since this awful trip began, and it's only to shove me away again.

"Go get Dark Presence 698," is all he grit to her through his teeth.

"Hey!" Caitlin yelled after him, as the Kai that I love stormed off in a cloud of silent fury. Over me. Over the trouble I'd caused him with the man in the room. My face must have looked awful, because Caitlin pulled out a tissue and began wiping it across my cheeks and my eyes.

I cried for real this time, hiccuping and trembling.

She was silent, and her cheerfulness was gone.

"You're really in a fix," she murmured. "Why'd Kai have to fall in love with a sweet girl like you, get you involved in this?"

I looked up at her. Kai in love with me? It hardly seemed like it, the way he handled me and was troubled by me. The way he avoided meeting my eyes, touching me as little as possible. The Kai of the past hadn't even loved me; just liked me as company, as a little blabbermouth to fill lazy summer days. The way he was willing to get me involved in _this, _whatever _this_ was. "What is this?" I managed to whisper, and she blinked at me with green eyes.

"He didn't tell you... Anything?"

I shook my head, and she rubs the tissue under my nose with a sigh. I wanted to stop crying, to stop the flow of tears that only a little kid would shed. Just like that man called me. _A ridiculous little girl with pink hair._ It seemed everyone thought that way. Including me.

Turning, she tapped a few buttons on the panel under the screen, and the scrolling numbers stopped. One row turned yellow, and suddenly, we were looking at a picture of...

Rick. Of my brother.

"Coded #346," she murmured. "Rick Chite. Currently resides in Mineral Town. Has one sibling... Or should I say had."

"How do you know my brother?" My red eyes widened.

"Please. Your brother is the most amazing Coded we've ever come across. Only two people have ever managed to stop becoming a werewolf completely. The other died shortly after the process. Rick's vital signs are all completely normal, besides a small personality change. But that's probably the result of his romance."

My throat went dry. I forgot the romance between Karen and my brother, forgot the rest, forgot where I was. "...My brother stopped becoming a what?"

She glanced up from the screen. "You didn't know? Surely you noticed. I mean, you seem a little bit oblivious, but certainly not to that extent." She touched the screen, the picture of Rick, and suddenly the picture transformed, becoming something else. Hair lengthened, a cruel grin formed. But it wasn't those that frightened me. Feral yellow eyes looked straight at me, out of the former face of my brother. Hungry.

I'd seen those before. Just for a few seconds, every once in a while. Rick would look at me like a cat at a bird. I was prey. I was HIS prey.

I wasn't on the boat anymore, but I still felt sick.

"A werewolf." Her eyes were on me again, searching.

"Yes," I managed, my heartbeats pounding and quick. "Yes, I've seen those before."

I turned away and held my stomach, and she began rubbing my back in smooth circles.

"It's all right, Popuri. All that's over now. Those beasts can't hurt you any more. You're safe here. We're the people that clean the world of people like them."

I jerked.

Rick had never hurt me. Something in him always stopped his pounce at the last minute: something in him still saw me as his beloved little sister. No. I wasn't afraid of Rick. I was afraid of him as a werewolf, but I was equally as scared of this place, of the fact that I would never see him again. My frightened child self was crying. I wanted out of this tiled building, out of a one-sided love that clung to existence like a drowning man to a rock. The creature in the picture was still my _brother_, who I'd never see again. I could imagine his face, blabbering at me.

_"That Kai's a bad apple,"_ he always grumbled, like some old coot. Or, _"You have to be careful, Popuri! Guys like Kai are trouble! They'll break your heart and step on the pieces!"_

I swallowed, the memories of our constant Kai bantering screaming louder in my ears.

_'Well, Rick,'_ I thought with sadness, _'You were right about almost everything.'_

Caitlin pressed a few more buttons on the panel. Once again, a row of numbers were highlighted. A picture of a small boy appeared on the screen, sulking as the woman behind him grinned through her teeth. I could almost hear her saying, "Smile, darn it." Behind them, a tall dark building rose out of a hill. _"Krip Orphanage_", was the text I could hardly read. Caitlin pressed a few more keys, then touched the screen in the place where it said, "_Uti_".

"I'd love to stay and disturb your innocent state of mind some more, Popuri, but I'm afraid I have to go pick up a kid." The screen made a beeping noise, and a box below it popped out. "Oooh, I get to drive the big boat." She pulled a pair of keys out of the box. "I'll ring Kai up and tell him to show you your room."

My mouth opened to tell her that he probably wouldn't want to, but Caitlin already had yet ANOTHER glowing screen out, small and in her hand. "There. He better explain some things to you."

She was gone, and I was left alone. As always.

Kai rounded the bend suddenly, and placed one hand atop of my puffy hair.

"It's on the third floor," he said, and guided us into a very small room, through two doors that opened in the middle. I couldn't see a staircase anywhere, which seemed strange. Then the box-like room jerked, and I felt it rising. Panic flooded me. The building was shaking, it was falling!

I screamed, and then Kai was covering my mouth with one tanned hand. He smelled like pineapples, and open air, and... the sea. Like ice cream. Like the beach at home. The shaking of the room seemed to subside a little. He wasn't worried at all. Maybe the shaking was just me, because I had been trembling like a frightened animal. But with Kai's warm hand on my lips, everything felt so different.

I went quiet, and he did too. Not like he had talked much in the first place. We were touching each other, skin to skin. Not an angry grip through the fabric on my shoulder. Just touching.

All of a sudden, I missed it. The days at the beach where we would sit and watch the sun set together, not because of some holiday, but because we could. Because I was in love with him. We would sit in the sand and run it through our toes and throw it at each other. Back before I begged him to take me along, and I got pulled into the dark whirlpool of this white building. Trapped forever, without my family.

The hand across my mouth slowly removed itself. The scent of Kai went away, but only for a moment. Because when the hand pulled from my mouth, it gently wrapped around my forearm and pulled me closer to him. I could hardly breathe. The hand on my head trailed down my hair, and I would have said he was stroking me if I didn't know better. It came to rest across his other hand, and then there he was, his arms wrapped around me. His head went and rested upon mine, and his warm breath went straight through my hair and down to my skin. My heart beat faster, in a frenzy. My vision went all foggy. I wanted to close my eyes and revel in the moment. I was feeling happy for the first time in two days.

But my head wasn't fooled.

He wasn't hugging me. He couldn't be hugging me. He couldn't be cradling me to him.

Because Kai didn't love me.

Almost as if to prove my point, he promptly let me go. There was a beep, and the same doors we had walked through only two minutes before opened to reveal a completely different hallway. I blinked, but the room outside didn't change. I was going insane.

Kai let out a big breath of air through his nose. I could swear he was laughing at me. I felt offended, in a silly way.

"It's an elevator. We don't have stairs around here. It's a little box that carries you up. It's attached to the top floor with pulleys and ropes, which then pull the box up as far as you want to go. An elevator. I forgot to tell you." We walked out the doors, and they closed behind us. I looked back, still in wonder. "These are the living quarters. My room is there." He pointed to one numbered door. "Yours is across from mine." He paused, as if deciding. "If you need me, Popuri..." He didn't finish the sentence, but I knew what he was saying. If I wanted to see him, if I wanted to talk to him, then there he was. An option. From the way he said it, I wouldn't have to talk to him. Not unless I wanted to. "You can't operate the elevator without a card, so you're stuck on this floor unless someone comes and brings you out. You can lock your door if you want. There are... Men on this floor, and some are kind of... I mean, only a few... Just lock your door when you're in there. All the food you need is in your fridge. You can watch the television, and there are games and everything." He looked at me, as if my opinion mattered in the least.

I couldn't talk to him about our relationship, or what was going on. My mouth wouldn't work. I forced it to move, and out popped: "Are there any chickens here?"

He looked at me. "...Well, no."

There went the last little piece of my life.

Nothing was the same. Nothing. I know that sounds stupid. Like chickens were so important to me. But they were all I dealt with for years and years. They were what made home smell like chicken feathers all the time, what mom and Rick and I laughed about together.

We stared at each other in an awkward silence. A former traveller and a chicken girl, both seeming out of place.

Something in his pocket made an alarm-like noise, and he pulled out two screens like Caitlin had. One, apparently, was for me. "Caitlin will be back tomorrow, and she can teach you how to use it," he said logically. The cold Kai that belonged here, that looked like he didn't want me, was back. "I have to go. See you later."

He raised his hand as if to touch my hair, but didn't. Just opened my door for me, then burned his eyes into my back as I walked in. "Popuri?"

It was such a soft call of my name that I barely heard it. But I heard it all the same. I turned, and red eyes locked on deep brown. He didn't say a word. My mouth opened once more, and out came the name of the one person I loved. My mind flashed back to the elevator, and I could almost smell his scent again, of pineapples and sand and sun. "...Kai?"

The door was closing. He was shutting it. But two words managed to come from his lips.

"I'm sorry."

And then he was gone.

* * *

_A/N: And there we have it, another chapter. Just to say, I had an awful time with my tense. Who knew writing in first person was so darn hard?! I kept switching over to present tense, and then I had to go back and put -ed's and was's and other past tense stuff. I swear I read over this about eight times, switching my tense constantly. Okay, so enough blabbing to myself. I bet nobody even reads this. On to the actual somewhat interesting part. Oh, and I'm sorry that I seem to have so many OC's. We'll see old Mineral Town again soon enough, if not the way Popuri expected it. Hey, and just a quick thing, dear readers, I'd love it if you tried to predict what the heck's going on with this weird facility place (I mean, it's not like I'm asking you to get ideas cuz I don't know... Right... Erm... Nah, I know what's going on). I just want to see if anybody can kind of tell so far or whether I need to have some big revelation scene. I probably will anyway. My favorite part in this whole chapter was probably Popuri going, "Oh no, I'll never see a chicken again!" Sob, sob._

_Ekoaleko- Hee, it's good to see you again. It's so awesome knowing I've got a constant support. You flatter me WAAAYYY too much. My head's gonna blow up from it being so big. Anyway, no, not really a Pirates of the Caribbean fic. That would be cool, though. MWA HA HA! Now I'll turn Kai into a hot skeleton!! HA HA HA!! ...Yeah. It's a great idea, but unfortunately I don't think they're gonna be riding on boats all too much. Writing the whole 'trapped in a hold' part is kind of already used a lot in here. Anyways, thank you so so much for your support. It's awesome!_

_Supernae- Hello! Thanks a bunch, right off the bat. I'm glad you like it! Poppy is about to be thrown into some fun! Quite a lot of evil on my part. But yes, suspense is cool. Anyway, thank you a ton for reading, and I'm really sorry I didn't update sooner... Everybody can throw me off the deck of the ship and feed me to sharks._

_Moonlit Dreaming- Hiiiii again! Thanks a ton for reading this!! I'm glad you like it, and I hope you liked this chapter too. Um... Soon... Yeah... If by soon, you mean the exact opposite of soon, yeah, I did that. Sorry! As I said to supernae, you guys can throw me overboard to the sharks. Anyways, thank you for coming back, and it's good to hear from you! See you next chapter!_


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: Wow, this was actually a decent updating time. I think. Um, well, Happy New Year. We're officially in 2009. My finals are over, and I didn't die. Anyways, thanks to everyone for their support and everything. I don't have much to say for once, besides that I hope you like it. Read and review, please! And tell me whether this story's working or not... I have my doubts, especially about this chapter, which I churned out. Please ignore the boring first part and get to the later part, which I like better. And if my plot is weird, because I can't keep what I've written and what I've thought separate, please tell me. It's good to know if I'm being confusing. Anyways, please enjoy the third chapter of End._

End

3

_Love is the strangest thing you will ever find. Nothing else is so cruel as to give you wings and lift you up to fly, only to ready its gun and shoot you when you're at your highest. Nothing else is as fragile as glass and at the same time as immovable as a mountain. Nothing else can make water and fire work in harmony. Nothing else will ever be as immortal, and nothing will ever be as short-lived._

* * *

I flipped off the television set, and slumped back in my chair.

Of all the things I had been afraid of, boredom was the thing that got me. I had hardly been inside the steel building of the organization for a week, and yet I heard myself sighing and staring off into space. Besides the television, and some board games in the large closet, I had no entertainment. And besides my first interest in the T.V., I found it boring. I had never been the owner of a television before, as it was rare for anyone to own one. Jill had one, but her house had been closed off, boarded up. Weeds grew in her once beautiful field.

I shut my eyes tightly, and removed that from my thoughts. Mineral Town was impossible now; a dream of the past that would never return. I was trapped here, in my large room. The plush bed, the lavish furnishings, the television, and the strange machines I now owned meant nothing.

I was a prisoner.

There was a crash from just outside my door. I don't know why I went to look, but boredom may have fueled me. I should have been wary, but I wasn't. I had something fun and interesting to do, and I was dying to do it.

Caitlin stood there, red hair wild as the squirming little boy in her grasp screamed and flailed.

"_I WANT TO GO HOME!!!"_ He bellowed, tiny fists battering the taller girl. Angry tears fell onto the carpet below them. "WHY DID YOU TAKE ME AWAY?!"

My heartbeat pounded loud in my ears, and through the scene in front of me, I saw my mental battle with Kai.

I wanted to do that, to pound and hit at Kai, to have a fit and make him take me home. I wanted to be my chicken girl self. I wanted to scream those words at him and make him listen. This little boy and I were the same. Trapped, held in by someone.

"Shhh. You're fine... um, sweetheart. We've told you. We're going to take care of you from now on."

"I DON'T WANT YOU TO!" He swung around with a sharp kick, and managed to hit me. Finally, Caitlin noticed that I was standing there. She blinked for a few seconds, and the boy took the opportunity to deliver a punch to her nose. She reeled back, mumbling a furious word. He scrambled up, then ran for the elevator. Suddenly, I realized.

I was following him. I could easily keep up. He had short little legs, and ran exactly like Stu had. I grabbed him, twirling him up and around, and caught him lightly. Despite the murderous expression on his face, he was really just a little kid. There was one thing, though, that I had not noticed before, a trait that made my stomach drop and my hands shake.

His eyes were entirely black, so black it almost darkened the hall around us.

"Let me go," he commanded with fury. My body began to move to do as he said, pulled by some unknown force. I protested then, forcing my arms to hold tight. I wouldn't let him go- he was just a little boy. I didn't care if the organization here was trying to do something to him. He was determined, in a way I had only seen men years older than him be. He would try to swim away from here, if he couldn't walk. He would drown in the harsh waves. And, probably, the organization wouldn't care. I wanted to hold him tight, wanted to make sure he wouldn't do it. I wanted to protect him. Even though he looked nothing like Stu, acted nothing like Stu, I could only see Stu's little face, attached onto his own. I could only see Stu crying and hurting himself.

I didn't want that to happen.

He quieted then, and blinked up at me with blue eyes. The black was gone, some strange trick of the light, or perhaps of his anger.

"You're different," was all he mumbled.

Caitlin, massaging her nose, moved towards us, and he stiffened. As a reflex, I held on tighter.

"What? Why did you stop now? We injected enough sleeping liquid in you to kill an elephant earlier, and now you calm down." She rolled her eyes, and I wondered if she was joking. "Little brat. Your dark power won't work on me, if you hadn't noticed." Curiously, she observed him in my arms. "She's just a regular human- you could easily kill her. So why aren't you doing so?" She smiled then, snapping her fingers. "Oh, I remember. You can read minds. She's innocent, isn't she?"

He didn't respond. I, meanwhile, had lost myself in the speech. Mind reading. Dark powers, sleeping liquid, killing me. A _regular_ human. Something in the way she said it made me think that she wasn't, that he wasn't. I looked down at the child's angry face, worried.

I recognized it then.

It was the little boy in the picture on the screen from a week ago, my first day here, standing with the woman in front of the orphanage. The frowning, yet happy little boy. I recalled her strange statements; she had said something about picking someone up.

It was this little boy. Wherever he had been, he was here now. Why, when, and how didn't matter. He was here, and from the way she was looking at him, with a kind pity, I could tell. He was the same thing as me. A prisoner here, trapped and helpless, afraid and almost angry.

"Good job, Popuri." She picked him up, and he started screaming again, reaching out for me. My heart gave a wrench. "I'll be sure to mention this to the boss."

"Caitlin-" I opened my mouth, to tell her to put him down, to tell her please to let him go. He was just a little boy. He didn't deserve this.

"Popuri, it's what we do. These monsters may as well have a purpose. You're going to have to get used to it. Sorry." She held him tightly by his tiny wrists, and began to drag him down the hall, the opposite direction. He screamed and wailed and tried to punch her again, but it was no use. He was just too small to make an impact.

His screams echoed in my dreams and thoughts.

* * *

_Why did you take me away?!_

I knew the answer to that one. Because I had asked, begged Kai. Because I had cried and told him to.

Every night that I had the dream, I would wake up in a pool of sweat, trembling. I didn't want to be a prisoner, I didn't want the little boy to be a prisoner. Why couldn't we be free? Why hadn't I helped him, turned around and ran with him? It might have prevented him from going with Caitlin to- to wherever she took him, if only for a second. She had called him a monster, and looking in his black eyes, I realized I had felt the same. I had wanted to drop him like a rock, to give him to Caitlin before those black eyes drowned me. It was only the memory of Stu that kept me from letting him go.

I would roll out of my huge bed, and just sit and think for hours, staring out my window at the sea below. It used to be I could never sit still; I wanted to go out to the Spring, or to church, or to hang out with Kai, or Jill. I wanted to do things, not be stuck inside with my mother, selling things at a store which almost nobody came to. I hated being cooped up, hated being restricted. I was both, and there was nobody to complain to about it. Patience was something that you learned, not something that came naturally, especially for me.

Impatience didn't matter, though, when you couldn't hear the ticking noises of a clock over your own thoughts and the screams of a little boy. I don't know why it affected me so much, one incident that didn't even really involve me. If I hadn't intervened, he would still have gone away, scooped up in Caitlin's arms, held captive. I wondered if, when they first went and took him from that orphanage, if he asked them to bring him along. That thought above all made me sick with the nausea of what could have been.

I could have been sitting in my mother's arms, maybe a little regretful about Kai leaving, but still _whole_. I would have been with her, and Stu, and Rick, and everyone else. I wouldn't have known things about the world that would have shattered my confidence in my small existence. Like Rick being a werewolf, or Kai being a member of this organization. Or the awful fact that despite a few moments of tenderness, he didn't love me, and probably never would.

I hadn't gathered the courage to go knock on that door, the one only three steps away from my own.

I had talked to Kai, yes, on the strange little screen he had given me, which apparently was some cordless phone. One was a call to ask if my fridge was stocked, and the other I wasn't even sure was from him, a call right before I went to sleep. That call had scared and comforted me, when I picked it up and didn't hear a thing, not even breathing. "Hello?" I had said, and there was still silence on the other end of the line. I had taken a deep breath, waiting. And then there was the beep that let me know the call was over. That one call was enough to make me pathetically wonder, and dream, about Kai. Speaking of dreams.

It was during the fifth dream that week of the screaming little boy that I felt a hand shake me awake.

"Popuri." A hand gathered my hair and gave it a gentle tug. "Wake up, please."

I was going to scream, because there was a man in my room. A man with chocolate eyes, a purple bandanna, and a sad smile. I felt my beating heart speed up even further from its temporary scare.

"H-how did you get in?" I managed to gasp.

"Your window's open," he replied, as if that explained everything. Yes, my window had been open. If the ocean couldn't drown out the boy's echoing cries, then nothing could. The waves seemed to crash against the beach more loudly here, perhaps because of the angry steel building that overlooked the huge rocky cliff, facing the ocean.

"But-"

"Come," he motioned, and began to walk towards my door. I flung off my covers and rushed after him, the cold breath of air on my legs reminding me that I needed to ask for a new nightgown, one that wasn't a pink summer one.

It was only once we were outside and walking down the dark, deserted hallway that he explained.

"I can't take you home, Popuri." My breath hitched in my throat. Why was he bringing that up? Why, in the middle of the night, was he shaking me awake and leading me off somewhere? "...But I can do something similar."

He wouldn't turn to look at me, wouldn't let his eyes tell me the truth. He slid his card through the slot next to the elevator, and we were going up. I had only ever been on the lower floor before. Even before the elevator reached its final destination, I could hear a strumming pulse. It beat through the elevator, through the floor, through my very soul. It beat in time with my own heart, steady and neverending. My pulse sped up at the sound, and the other beat accelerated to match it. The elevator doors opened, and the beat just got louder.

There was a huge machine in front of me, wires running all across the room. In front of the large screen lay one simple chair, encased in a glass ball attached to the floor. Patterns of electric ran across the shining surface, and I realized I was clutching to Kai's arm.

"We have a name for it... Translated, it comes out as The Heart of the World." He stepped forwards, and I was forced to move with him. I couldn't pull my hands from their attachment onto his arm, could only move my bare feet until we were standing in front of the glass-encased chair. "...If you sit in it, it'll let you view whatever you wish." I reached a hand out to touch the smooth surface, but he wouldn't let me. Instead, he gently peeled my hand off his arm and walked over to the screen, tapping a few keys. "I've set it to Mineral Town. You can... You can go there whenever you wish. You just... Need me there with you. We aren't really supposed to be up here, you see. So you can't ask anyone else."

With a crackling of lightning, the glass ball opened, blue electric dancing across it.

"Do I sit there?" My voice was so quiet even I couldn't hear it. Apparently, Kai could.

"Yes." He came over and put a hand out as if to nudge me, but stopped himself, slowly lowering the hand to his side. "Just sit down, and you can see it. All of it." His knuckles clutched at his side. "...Sometimes, Popuri, things aren't all they seem to be. But the Heart of the World has no problem seeing straight through that. It sees everything, whether it's actually visible or not."

I had no idea what he was talking about, but it didn't matter at the time. I made my way over to the chair. It was cold, despite the electricity that surrounded it. I lowered myself into the steel seat, and the glass ball slowly closed itself. I could only see Kai for a moment past then, before the electricity blurred out everything. It was brighter than the sun, and I felt my skin burn from the heat of it. There was a tingling feel all over my body, and all I could hear was the steady beat of the machine... Or was it my heart? I couldn't tell anymore. It was too bright, too hot, and...

* * *

"Jill!" Breathing hard, Rick ran towards a glowing light. If I squeezed my eyes until they were almost shut, I could almost see the form of a girl, of my friend Jill, inside the bright ball. Besides that, all I could see was light, some green and flowing, some white and filling everything around her. Rick himself was considerably... Hairier than I had ever seen him, and when he opened his mouth, his teeth were sharper than they should have been. But his eyes were still pure blue, human. "Goddess, we've looked everywhere! Why won't you just tell me where Popuri is?! She's my sister, darn it! I have to know!"

I wanted to open my mouth and tell him, tell him I was right here... But he passed through me like I didn't exist. It had been so real... He had been so real. Then, he passed through me like I was smoke. I wanted to cry, because then I remembered that I wasn't home in Mineral Town. I was just in a machine that did who-knows-what.

"She's gone," the light whispered in the voice of my former best friend. "...He took her away. If I get my hands on him, I swear I will-"

Electricity crackled, and suddenly I was looking at my mother. Or what was left of her. Her face would have been as radiant as ever, if not for the worried frown that was on it. They had realized I was gone by that time; but they would never know where. My mother's curls, although limp, were just as pink as ever. It was her torso and her legs that made my whole body tremble and my heart cry out.

They were black, convulsed, and I could see her red blood flowing through them so slowly. The blood didn't even flow past her ankles, and her feet were a sickening pile of black soot. She was sitting behind her counter, hands propping up her face, worrying about me while her lower body wasted away to nothing, clutched in the dark hands of disease. I had always known that my mother was sick, slowly losing her ability to walk- I had just never seen it like this before. This way of seeing my mother, marked as half-dead, made me cry out, made me afraid. I didn't want to see her die, she couldn't die, she couldn't!!!

"Mama!" I cried, and she looked at me, red eyes wide, like she had heard me. I wanted her to hear me, wanted her to know that I loved her, that I was sorry for going away... so sorry...

"P-Popuri?!" She breathed, and reached one pale hand out to me. But as with my brother, it slid straight through me. I wanted to touch her, to have her hold me and tell me everything was all right. She stood up, and her black legs made an awful snapping noise, dark and moaning, as she edged towards me. "My baby... Are you there?"

I forced myself to look at her face, only at her face, as she wrapped her arms around me, or tried. She just keep slipping away from me, and there was nothing I could do to stop her. She was water in my hands, except for the black diseased part. That, I could feel. That propped against me, freezing cold with death. It was dead, and so it could touch me. That was what I had become.

"Mama, I didn't want to go away, not really... I'm sorry, Mama... I love you..."

The door of my former home opened, and in walked Elli, carrying a basket of eggs.

"Mrs. Chite, I went and took care of your chi- Ah!" She let out a scream as she looked at me. She, too, could see me. But with the arrival of Elli, my mother had lost the fragile bond between our worlds.

"Popuri!" She wailed, and moved her arms through me again, searching. "Popuri!" A pathetic whimper escaped my lips, but she was lost to me. Then, another crackling of electric, and everything went black.

* * *

I wanted it to be a dream. I never wanted to see my mother that way.

I opened my eyes, and Kai pulled me out of the chair.

"The system malfunctioned. We lost the connection." He ran his hands all over my face, my hair, my shoulders, my arms. "Are you all right? You were talking, you were crying... I shouldn't have shown you that, but you were just so unhappy without your family... I thought if you saw them again, it would be better for you- please, I'm sorry, don't cry." He babbled, something I had never seen Kai do before, his words a torrent in my ears. It was a relief to know that someone could touch me, that I was real, that I wasn't just a shadow in the world.

Yes, I was crying. And even though I had just seen a terrible vision of my mother, and had an almost nightmarish experience, I felt that stupid warm glow again, because Kai was there, touching me and holding me, supporting me.

It always hit me at the worst times, that awful weight that slammed me when I realized exactly how much I loved Kai. It could be emotional things that triggered it, or stupid things, or just seeing him. Even when I was just watching a romance show on T.V., every time a couple did something together, I compared it to our relationship. And it hurt when I figured out that our relationship had no romantic qualities, that Kai and I may as well be brother and sister. He protected me and spent time with me. That didn't mean he loved me. He didn't kiss me or take me out on dates or say romantic things. Even when, hardly a week before, Caitlin had told me that he had fallen in love with me, I had hardly slept that night, and not only because I was trapped. It was partially because I was thinking it over, thinking over his hug in the elevator, over everything he had said to me since we had arrived.

It was one of those awful moments when I knew I loved him more than anything else in the whole world.

He went quiet, staring at me, and I realized he was waiting for me to say something. I opened my mouth, and out came another wail. And Kai, the ever-confident 'womanizer', looked absolutely terrified at what he should do with a sobbing girl. Unfortunately, he didn't have to deal with it for long, because the screen in his pocket let out beeping noises, and he pulled it out. After scanning it with his eyes, he looked to me.

"My father says he's hearing noises up in the room where The Heart of the World is," he said wryly. "He wants me to look into it." I couldn't help but smile a little over my tears at the irony. "Come on, let's go, before someone else is sent up here."

We headed back through the dark hallways, and went into my room. He tucked me under the covers like you might your child, and smiled down at me through the thick veil of darkness, a simple traveller on the beach again for that one blinding moment. I sleepily smiled back. Even if he didn't love me, sometimes I thought I could get along on simple fondness. That was the intensity of my stupid lovesickness. He was sitting on my windowsill, about to leave, when I heard my own voice say something.

"Thank you, Kai."

"You're welcome, Poppy." He hadn't used my nickname since we first arrived. I had thought I would never hear it, not anymore. Once again, I was crushed with that awful realization. This time, due to it being about three in the morning, and me having been thoroughly traumatized, I voiced it.

"Kai," I mumbled, feeling my eyes weighed down with sleep, "I love you."

I would have been embarassed, or angry, or upset, or felt plain stupid had I not fallen asleep the next instant. I couldn't see Kai's reaction, couldn't listen to my own mind bereave me. The emotion that I felt was calm. Despite seeing my mother almost dead before my eyes, despite my confession, despite that the little boy should have still been screaming in my head, and despite me being miles away from home, trapped in an institution where they kidnapped children, I fell into a dreamless sleep. For the first time since the summer had ended, and my nightmare of a life had begun, the only thing I could do was listen to ocean waves gently lulling me to sleep, and breathe in the lingering scent of pineapple.

* * *

_A/N: Whew, that's off my back! Anyways, time for me to babble._

_supernae- Yep, finals are over. Yay! And now I can post and all. Anyways, thank you for reviewing! I'm glad that you like this story. Hope you liked this chapter too!_

_All right. Now I'm off to go be a freak and listen to some music. And eat. And play piano. And be happy at the three day weekend. I hope you guys like it too. Bye! See you next chapter!_


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: Hi there! All right, so it's been forever since I've updated. I must say, first of all, that I am becoming increasingly unhappy with this story, and I'm being tempted to stop writing it. I hate it hate it HATE it when an author stops right in the middle, so I've vowed never to do so myself. This story will finish, but it'll probably be a lot shorter than I'd originally intended and I don't think there will be any follow ups. For anyone who's supported me throughout, thank you SO much and I love you all. As authors we all know how awesome it feels to have support and feedback. Please enjoy this (late) installment of End!_

End

4

_Selfish: devoted to or caring only for oneself; concerned primarily with one's own interests, benefits, welfare, etc., regardless of others._

_Love can be a selfish word, for i__t is a dimension that only truly fits two._

* * *

"Popuri?"

My door creaked open, as Caitlin stuck her red head in.

"Hey, Popuri!"

I ignored her.

"...Aww, c'mon. You can't still be mad over that kid." She studied me. "You are a morbid little grudge holder, despite the pink hair. Don't worry, the little monster's fine."

The little monster. Some people referred to their kids like that in a humorous, teasing way. But I had heard Caitlin call him a monster before, and there was nothing loving about it. His cries and the black aura he had still haunted my dreams. I had to know.

"What's his name?"

She blinked at me. "...Hmm. Okay. I suppose you're allowed. The kid's Alexander, but everybody just calls him Alex. His middle name's Timothy." Her eyes bored into me. "...You really care."

I bit my lip and twirled a pink lock around my finger, refusing to look at her.

She shook her head. "Popuri. Don't get too attached. This isn't like your little hometown, where everybody dies in the same house where they were born. People disappear, and nobody knows where. Except for Kai's father, of course. He... He's the one that sends them off." Her eyes narrowed. "Popuri, he wants to talk to you. I won't lie. Widen those little red eyes, plead, do whatever you must. I like you, girl, and I don't want to see anything happen to you. Besides that it would break Kai's heart, you won't survive whatever it is he wants you to do. You're a delicate child yet."

My face burned. "I'm not a child."

"You are here." She beckoned with her finger for me to follow her as she spun and left the room.

"And Caitlin?"

"Yes?" She slid her card through the slot and tapped her red fingernails impatiently along the wall, as the elevator doors slid open.

"...Why do you keep saying that he loves me?" My throat closed up.

She sighed and pushed me into the elevator.

"Popuri, I'm guessing that what you see now is some sort of evil, cruel Kai that hates your guts. Before Kai went to Mineral Town, he was pretty much acted like this... All the time." She waved her hand and squeezed her eyes shut as she thought. "Kai liked the freedom and... the happiness that Mineral Town gave him. And Kai liked you. Very much. He started taking interest in strange things when he returned. Surfing, cooking... He enjoyed his life on the beach, away from here. Kai got to live like a normal person, not a supernatural... Well, you've probably guessed what we do."

No. I hadn't.

She looked at me, and then sighed again. This one was long and bitter.

"Have you ever heard of the Ghostbusters?"

"No."

She laughed. "Okay. This will be harder than I thought. You really are a small-town girl. Essentially, our organization here is made to take down anything supernatural. Werewolves, vampires, ghosts, mythical creatures. Even higher up mystical beings, like your Goddess. We've never been able to capture one of those, though. They're crazy strong. The whole thing might sound cliche, and stupid, and silly. But it's real. And they're threats. We recruit them, if possible, to take down more of their kind. But eventually, we'll destroy them." She went quiet. "Completely destroy. Every one, anything supernatural. Eventually, our organization will have to collapse in on itself, because we rely too much on it. Sad, isn't it?"

There was a ding, and the long elevator ride ended.

And all I could ask was why.

"Nobody knows. All of this- every day, every kidnapping, every imprisonment. And nobody involved knows why. There is no reason." Her hands unconsciously clutched at her clothes, her hair. "We're playing this dark game, and we don't know why. Ever since I was brought here, it's just been pure misery, and nobody tells you a thing. Is that why you think Kai doesn't love you, because he brought you to this place? Perhaps you're right. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps we're all condemned because that blasted man lifts a finger and tells us to go. Is it worth it? Is it? How can we live like this?"  
She wasn't even talking to me anymore, ranting to herself in a frenzy.

Before, I had seen Caitlin, and Kai, and everyone else that was here as the imprisoners- the ones who turned the key and closed the gate, who locked me in and hurt me. I hadn't seen the chains around their feet, but now I could. They had more freedom than I, but they too were trapped.

They called me a child, someone who didn't know anything, but they were just as in the dark. Kai could try and protect me, but he had no control over my fate, or what happened to me.

Did he love me?

That tiny voice in my head, now strengthened by Caitlin, whispered that he did.

And there he was, standing in the room, clutching my hand with strength, determined.

"Father."

The man surveyed us with cold curiosity. "Kai, we have spoken of this before. I am a busy man. I do not have time to listen to your pathetic little requests about your precious little... girl."

"You can't do this to her. To me. This has nothing to do with your plans, this has nothing to do with anything! You're torturing her with no visible intention!"

"Don't be a fool. Naturally I have an intention. If you remember, Kai, she is friends with the Goddess and sister to a former werewolf. If I, for example, wished to capture said Goddess, it wouldn't be impossible for me to use the girl as bait."

Kai's hand tightened on mine, practically crushing it in his grip. My pale hand contrasted with his tan, callous one; he was angry and I was helpless, once again.

"Bait," he practically spat. "Bait. You think I'll let you use Popuri as bait?"

The man's face darkened. "Monitor those emotions, Kai. Remember who is in control here."

And then I was wrenched along with Kai as he stormed to the front of his father's desk and slammed his fist down upon it, starting a lengthy, furious rant in their language. I was cringing and felt the tears forming at the corner of my eyes, salty and terrible, childish. I was cut out, a breeze clinging to Kai's sleeve, until a perfect hand landed upon my shoulder.

"Sir," Caitlin smoothly intervened, "I believe that Popuri's input would make Kai more accepting, if not more understanding. After all, I am sure she would be willing to sacrifice a few things if we were to offer payment."

"And what would you suggest, Caitlin?" His black eyes turned to glare at her. "You have five seconds to convince me that your interruption doesn't deserve a beating."

Caitlin didn't even flinch at the threat. "Popuri's mother has an easily curable disease. We possess the flower. If Popuri obeys us, we cure her mother and everything comes out dandy. But I bet she would agree with us even without such a payment, wouldn't you, Popuri?"

Her eyes met with mine, brimming with a malice I had never encountered in her before. Somehow, the man before us had changed her. I wanted to step back, but Kai was my harbor, regardless of how safe he was for me.

"Why is that?" The man's eyes trailed on her every move, humor making his dark eyes narrow.

"Do you," she whispered, circling me, "Popuri Chite," her face came close to mine, "take Kai to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

My heart gave a painful cry. How many times had I imagined that scene in my mind, the pure white dress and roses, coming down the aisle to meet the person I loved most. My red eyes turned to look at him, to question him, and his brown looked back at me, startled and unsure, pained. I opened my mouth to ask what they meant, but Kai beat me to action.

"No," he gritted out, and his father gave a chuckle.

Kai wrenched his arm from my fingers and turned away from me. My heart was burning in fire, flaming to ash. After all this. I had thrown away my life because I thought he might want me for once, just once. Once would be enough for me, little chicken girl. I was a little girl. Tears were coming out quickly, burning my white cheeks and leaving their red mark on my eyes. I couldn't move.

"This is an acceptable version of my plans." The chair turned around and Caitlin grinned up at me like a cat. I still didn't understand. Why would they want me to marry Kai? She had to take my hand and pull me away from the desk. I was in a daze. Kai was already back in control, walking from the room with his hands in his pockets and a smile frozen to his lips.

When we were outside he slapped Caitlin so quickly I didn't even realize what he had done. She held her cheek with a smile, with a laugh, green eyes smirking to his face with a satisfied glory.

"I'll give you a free one, Kai," she sang, her voice breathy and so light I felt she would float away. "But no matter how fast you are you still won't be able to get your hands on me."

"Do not push me," he hissed. His handsome face twisted from controlled anger to wild rage. My Kai was angry over me, over her, over our arranged marriage... A small cry forced itself through my throat and I must have taken a step back, because he whirled to look at me.

I must have been a sight. Red eyes, pale, hair frizzy and uncombed, ruby eyes looking to him, small childish body trembling beneath his hot stare. Hopeless and crushed, worn to the thin by this horrible place and what it was doing to me, emotionally and physically. Goddess, why was I so frail?

"My mother," I whispered, small and tiny in the face of confrontation. "Can he really heal her?"

"Of course," Caitlin snorted.

I summoned the courage remaining in my small body and turned to Kai, who was staring at me still, gaze moving over me like a wave, taking in everything at once and trying to bring it in and understand.

"I have no doubt he can," he finally said.

"So you'll comply, then? Don't be a fool, Popuri, and take the good things given to you." Caitlin's voice was smooth, persuasive. I had seen her in so many moods by now it was like she was constantly changing: my friend one moment and a complete member of Kai's society the next. One minute she said Kai loved me and the next she was forcing our marriage.

Kai's fists clenched at his sides. Even in my oblivious naivette, I could easily tell that Kai didn't want this. It was spelled out in the stiffness of his posture and the pained scowl that grew on his face. He pulled at his bandanna with silent fury. I hated to see him that way, hated to see my precious summer traveller angry with me.

"Popuri," Caitlin urged sweetly, "Let Kai know your feelings."

My eyes burned and it hurt to swallow through the large lump growing there. My eyes moved to Kai, but he was still turned away, a wall firmly established between us.

I couldn't make my Kai do this. I was such a selfish child; I couldn't force my way if he didn't want it. I wanted him to love me, so much I felt I was on fire. I wanted to breathe in his scent of pineapples and summer and for him to hug me back, really hug me back, for once. But I couldn't force him to do any of that, not me.

"You don't have to marry me if you don't want it."

It was whispered out, my voice breaking and wavering on each syllable, a song that attested to how lonely I felt.

Then I fled.

"Idiot!" I heard hissed behind me, but I couldn't tell if it was meant for me. I did not care either.

There were footsteps as Caitlin with her long legs easily caught up to my tottering run, red hair flung about her face with a sense of urgency. She shook her head, but her green eyes were sad, hopeless.

"You two," she murmured, and reached her pale arms around me. "You make this so difficult." I reacted as anyone would to a pair of warm arms when they were crying. I put my head on her shoulder and let it flow, let my quiet sobs escalate into gasping cries. I would prefer his arms over hers, but who was I to choose? I knew he was still in the dark hall, dimly lit by overhead lamps. I knew he was still standing there, purple bandanna pulled far over his forehead, but brown eyes surveying, watching.

That was too much for me.

His hoarse voice broke through Caitlin's whispered murmurs of comfort. "Let me-"

Her hug stiffened and she looked straight at him. "You can't have it this way, Kai. Don't you see what you're doing to her? Can you not tell? Popuri loves you, darn it! She came over here in that bloody boat just like everyone else, except on her own decision! You think she is too frail to handle a lifetime of this? I think she's stronger than you! You're AFRAID, Kai! You're afraid she will be hurt or used by this organization that your own father controls. You're afraid this innocent soul will be corrupt, your precious person destroyed. You're afraid that she won't love you if you condemn her more than you already have! She still loves you even when she's seen this darkness that lies in your soul! This isn't something you can lock out of your inner fortress. She's already breached the walls, because you let her in. And now you're forcing her out. Oh, it hurts you plenty to do such a thing, but you're protecting her. Such the noble knight, sacrificing your whole self for an unstable love but not allowing her to do the same in return when her path turns rough. You just didn't expect her to be so attached, did you? You believed no one could love you. You can have your way with women and they can all die, but Popuri we must guard by chaining her to you and starving her of any love, any caress, any certainty of your affection. She thinks you hate her! Look, Kai! Look at what you've done to the only person you ever loved!"

She whipped us around and pushed me out towards him, in front of her. Reflected in his eyes I could see myself, my childish body fatigued and wraith thin with depression. My pink hair and red eyes used to highlight my rosy cheeks, but they now served as the only pale, dim color on me. My tears still rolled down my trembling face, though my sobbing had ceased.

"She's dying, Kai. It's not from this place. It's not being separated from home. It's not the horrors of our organization, for we have shielded her from most of that. No, Kai. It's you."

She let me go and my weight became too much for me. My heart was a rock and it dragged me down into the earth.

Through the haze of my tears I could barely see him as he walked over to me, reached down and pulled my face up in front of his own.

"Popuri," he began hesitantly. "Do you honestly believe that I... hate you?" His own voice was incredulous, but tense.

"Sometimes," I choked out. I still couldn't look at him. "Sometimes you do."

He pulled my face to his level once more. Out of the corner of my vision, I saw his eyes blaze. "When is 'sometimes'?"

I didn't respond. I couldn't respond. I was not even sure myself: all I knew was that Kai's love for me was unstable, unsure. It could fall into nothingness at any time, be torn away from me easily. I was helpless.

My face was trembling. My tears were jerked into unnatural patterns, tumbling down my face in waves. Then I realized. I was not the one shaking; it was Kai, his hands on my cheeks unsteady.

"All the time," he whispered to me, voice hoarse once more, "All the time, isn't it? You think I tolerate you like some kind of annoying child whose feelings you can't hurt and you feel obligated to care for." He sucked a breath in. "_Goddess_, Popuri. You just... don't seem to understand..."

"Get it bloody out," Caitlin spat. "We don't have time for you to sit around vaguely hinting that you don't hate her. Tomorrow we're taking you two to the market and after that you're getting married. Slowly working up to a general agreement that your relationship is more than friends has come far too late. Say something permanent. Actually, perhaps it would be best if you proposed-" she paused for a moment, then glared at him. "Don't look at me that way. Popuri WILL be your wife, if you wish her to live. You have no idea the risk I took for you two- no, for her. Do not think I would do anything for you."

Kai's face twisted into a grim line. "I would prefer if you had not suggested it."

"Oh? Then what do you propose we do with little Popuri here? She currently serves no purpose to your father, and we all know how he hates to see human waste."

"Don't call her that." He stepped closer, and Caitlin smiled confidently into his dark face.

"Then what else? Besides, Kai," she finished casually, pushing me forward so he was forced to catch me, "Don't act as if you aren't looking forward to it. And when this scheme is complete, perhaps your father will let you keep her. Popuri will serve our cause, and then she will be allowed to remain beside you. In case you haven't noticed, your father quite enjoys how... easily you can be manipulated when your precious girl is involved."

My mouth was dry, but I managed to open it up and speak. "...Why do you want us to get married?"

Caitlin broke into a grin. "Isn't that obvious? We haven't been able to get close to the Harvest Goddess in years. We haven't even managed to get on the island; every time we send a crew she sinks the ship. Planes get struck down by lightning... we've even tried swimming, but that was a far greater failure than the other two. But if you were on the boat... She would be unable to destroy it. We'd tie you to the mast and make sure that if we died, you would as well, and she knows that. Essentially, Popuri, you're our ticket to Mineral Town. And not to mention the key to luring the Harvest Goddess away from her spiritual realm." Her grin grew wider, and I felt my body go cold as her eyes sparkled in joyful malice.

"Shut up," Kai growled, but the woman was far gone, delighted with the image, lacing her fingers together in front of her and still smiling.

"Your marriage will be her final undoing. She will be forced to attend; it's a rule for her to bless all unions of her townsfolk. And when she appears at the altar... we will be waiting."

My legs went numb and I began to stagger. My friend. My best friend. Jill... My wedding wasn't supposed to be this way... My wedding was supposed to be filled with love and Kai's carefree smile. I saw the white gown for what it was to be: a weapon straight to my best friend's heart and a key to the destruction of my village. Kai held me as Caitlin's eyes lost their unnatural shine.

"Mm... Went a bit too far with her, didn't I?" She blinked and the final traces of the delusion left her gaze, to be replaced with a strange sadness, hardened by resolve. "It is a death trap for the Goddess... She might as well know what this means. If it is any explanation as to why you don't want to marry her."

Kai's grip on me went ever tighter and he spun us both around, pushing me away from the red haired woman. Our steps resounded on the hard floor, until his voice came out honest and raw.

"I never said I didn't _want_ to marry her." He didn't even stop walking. "I just can't." He glanced back at her once more, and I could suddenly see a soft grin come onto his face. "There's a difference, you know." That smile turned down to me, an expression I hadn't seen in a long time but treasured as much as my life.

He let me walk on my own as we approached the elevator, tugging on his purple bandanna and letting his gaze travel the walls. We walked into the small room and I felt it shift beneath me, pulling us up. I remembered the last time I had been in this elevator with Kai, and my cheeks flushed.

There was something tugging at my mind from the previous night, but it was hazy and dark and weighed down by sleep so it sunk into my subconscious. I remembered pineapples... I remembered the cool breeze drifting from my open window. Kai had taken me back to my room, and had tucked me into my warm covers, and then...

The elevator jerked to a stop and I lost what I believed to be only a memory of a dream.

I pulled open my door, and it reminded me so much of the very first time I had been here, when I was confused and lost. All I had now was more information and more mysteries at my fingertips, and maybe... that glowing warm feeling in my chest that let me know he wanted me. Caitlin had told me for my entire stay here that he loved me, but it had only taken a few sentences from Kai to make me believe it.

It was horrific, but I was happy. They were planning to use me, to destroy my village and remove our goddess and my best friend, and all I could think of was Kai opening my door. I stepped inside, into my bright prison, and he looked back at me unsteadily, hand on the doorknob and face considering something...

My stomach rumbled.

"...Didn't eat breakfast this morning, did you?"

My cheeks went as red as my eyes and I whirled to the fridge, pulling it open as the frigid air hit my face. Wonderful... just wonderful. He looked as if he was about to tell me something, and the best I could do was let my hunger get in the way.

A tanned hand fell on top of my pale one on the handle, and I started.

"What have you been eating?" He inspected the contents of the fridge, and let a smirk cross his face. "Same stuff as the rest of us, I see."

I couldn't help but feel awkward and out of place. His chocolate eyes took on a lazy confidence, and the scent of sand and pineapples was overwhelming as it came off him. He was more like my mysterious traveller than ever, the one I had fallen in love with, but I knew that was not his normal self. I knew the darkness, the suffering that lay behind the summer sun.

"Kai-"

He cut me off, reaching past me to pull the freezer open.

"Would you like a snow cone?"

I blinked at him. "...What?"

He still did not look at me. "And some pizza or something, of course." He took a deep breath as he slung a small bag of ice over his shoulder. "And then... We can talk about this."

I was torn.

One half of my heart knew what was best for the town, knew what was best for the Harvest Goddess. I could not return, could not be a part of the trap that would ensnare and kill her.

Another part of me remembered my mother's dying legs, black and broken, hardly supporting her. With every glowing smile she had given me, she had ground her legs further into dark dust. They promised to heal her, they promised what my father had. He might be able to come home, if he knew. His search for that distant flower would end and he would return to us, to my healthy mama and the newly confident Rick. He might put some trust in me, finally, the woman who had done what he could not for years.

My broken family would be pieced back together. But it would be under a shattered red sky, with the chickens dead and the blood of my best friend on my fingertips.

My other motive was nothing but selfish.

To marry Kai... It was everything the Mineral Town chicken girl had wanted, to marry her precious traveller and live her happy life with her family.

I couldn't be a little chicken girl anymore, who didn't know anything and who selfishly pushed her way. Adults had to choose the right thing even if it ripped their heart into a thousand pieces and flung it into the depths of the sea.

I remembered the swimming contests we had on the beach, those that Kai always won.

"Do you think... If the ship was sinking... That they'd kill you, Kai?"

He glanced up sharply from the kitchen counter, his knife hovering over a fruit, chocolate eyes serious once more. "No... Most likely not... But...?"

"I'll pray to the Harvest Goddess when we're on our way to the island." I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. The knife was embedded into the cutting board by then, and Kai was approaching me fast, gripping my hands in his own and anchoring me to the spot.

"No." It was firm, curt, final. But it held a sense of desperation. He was... begging me. "No, Popuri. Absolutely not."

I couldn't look at him, even when his breath was hot and ragged upon my face. "I'll tell her to sink the ship, no matter what..."

* * *

_A/N: Haha it's so DEPRESSED! Anyways, I believe I've been getting Kai's character off track and I do love him as a character, so I'm trying to get our handome-bandanna-wearing-flirtatious cook back. Please tell me if anything's confusing or strange, because while it may make sense to my demented little brain, it may not to readers. Reviewing is always, always appreciated. Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!_

_supernae- Thank you so much for reviewing! Yep, Poppy's pretty depressed right now ain't she? Haha I do actually kind of like the whole darkness of the disease thing, because I've always wondered exactly what's wrong with Lillia. She's so SWEET, I can't believe they'd inflict HER with the disease and not Anna, Manna, or Sasha. Grr. Well, anyway, thanks for reading as always and I hope you've enjoyed this._


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N: Well, I know this chapter is pretty short, compared to what I've done on the past few. But this is probably one of my faster updates, haha. I said I would move quick, and I am. Besides, it's SUUUUMMMMEEERRRRR, the best time of the YEAR! I hope you enjoy this chapter and thanks to all my readers, as always. If anything's confusing, feel free to speak up._

End

5

_Perhaps I left no footprints because I never walked that beach at all._

_Perhaps I was drowning in the waves the whole time, and never knew..._

* * *

My hope lay on Caitlin's outstretched finger, from which dangled a corded device. A telephone.

They were offering me a telephone.

My hand reached out for it instinctively once more. Caitlin stopped her long dialogue and jerked it from within my grasp, clucking her tongue.

"Are you listening, Popuri? We've been at this for a good hour now. The sooner you absorb this into your pink head the sooner you get to talk to your family."

My throat ached. I wanted to hear them, to hear their voices and my mama say my name. I wanted to tell them I loved them. I didn't care if Rick yelled at me, I didn't care if Mama cried until the guilt inside me burst, I just wanted to talk to them. It had been months now. Months of my life in a tiny cell floating out in the middle of the ocean.

Kai was leaning against the wall of the tiny room, arms crossed tight and face somber. His purple bandanna was darker than ever in the dim light of one bulb. His eyes flickered to mine, then back to another wall as quickly as they'd come.

He had stormed out the day before, slamming into doors and walls and knocking over objects, hissing curses under his breath in another language. His last words screamed in my head. _You will not take that woman's place in death._

"-no mentioning anything about Kai's family or this place. You've been vacationing to beaches, understand? Which doesn't exactly explain why you're as pale as the winter moon, but I doubt they'll care after so long-"

They were back again, those chocolate eyes, lingering longer, and then with a sudden chill, swept away. I forced myself to concentrate on Caitlin's words.

"You just tell them that you eloped with Kai, and now you're returning to have a wedding at your own hometown. Ready?" I nodded. She set the white phone on the table in front of me. "Just remember. We've got wire taps and I'm sitting right here listening to you. There will be no hints of the truth, do you understand?"

No hints of the truth. My entire life was a lie. I was being forced to lie to my family, my friends, sneaking up on them with a knife concealed behind my back.

I dialed the number scrawled on the yellow parchment in front of me.

There was a sudden click and then a scuffle. I heard laughter on the other end, and it sounded so foreign in my ears.

"Hello, this is the Mineral Town Inn, how can I help you?" It was Ann. Her voice boomed through the phone and I thought I saw a glimpse of a smirk on Kai's face.

"H-hi." Suddenly, it was so awkward. I was drowning in a sea of options, of opinions, of guilt and fear. How was I supposed to do this? _Hey, it's Popuri, I just went missing for a couple months. Can you put my family on the line? Oh, yeah, it's been all fun and sun for me and Kai over here!_

"Huh? I can't hear you, speak up!" Her voice was cheerful, and my own voice was so foreign. I hardly spoke, a far cry from the bubby pink little girl I had been.

"It's... um... It's Popuri."

The festive tone was lost. I could hear her breathing, a tiny murmur of disbelief. There was a noise as she put her hand over the phone to muffle it.

"Dad," I heard, for the redhead couldn't keep her voice low enough. "Dad, you need to get over here. Now."

"What? Why the glum face, Ann? You-"

"Find Rick and tell him to get over here."

"Who is it?" I suddenly heard a female voice interrupt. Mature, soft, but with a hard edge of sorrow. "Is... is it..."

"Yes."

Suddenly Karen's voice was resounding in my ear.

"Popuri," she stated smoothly. Though I knew she must have been drinking, for it was Karen at a bar, there was no slur to her speech. "You better be safe. And Kai better be praying. Where have you bloody been?"

"I..." Caitlin's face was before my own then, green eyes issuing a stern warning.

_Sound cheerful._

"Hey, Karen," I began. I forced my voice to come out bright, more cheerful than it should have been. "How have you guys been doing? It's been... nice where I am." The lie grew firmer on my lips, tangible, as I forced out the lump growing in my throat. "I'm having the most wonderful time!" I tried to remember how to babble, but it seemed I had forgotten how to do it naturally. It came out stiff to my ears. "Kai and I eat ice cream and pizza every day! And... oh, you'd love the city, Karen, it's wonderful! It's winter there, um, isn't it? Well, it's summer here. We're always in summer now! It's just so exciting, and Kai is..." He still was stiff against the wall. "Kai is so funny, but he's always funny, and..." I tried to remember how I had described that traveller, the one I used to know. "We eat pineapples and see so many new people! It's so much more exciting than town!"

It seemed all action on the other end had died. I was greeted with a stony silence that threatened to shatter the phone.

"You sound like you're having quite a time." Karen's voice was low. "But do you know how your family's been doing?"

My hand trembled on the phone. The way Karen said family... Why wouldn't they find my mother? Shouldn't they have first gone to my...

Caitlin saw my face convulse, the tears that pricked at the corners of my eyes. She shook her head and gave me a smile, too bright to be real.

"N-no, but I'd love to hear! How's my chicken doing? And my brother, haha, I'm sure he's having a fit-"

"Put Kai on the line."

I was no longer speaking to Karen. The tears spilled over as I recognized Rick's voice, deeper even than the last time we had talked. My speech broke off and my eyes darted to Kai. I wanted my brother, my big brother who always looked out for me...

"I thought this would happen," he murmured, and took the phone from my hands. I couldn't bear to look at it.

"Hey." His voice had that surreal quality to it, smooth and teasing. "Oh, Rick, what a surprise. Yeah, it's Kai. What's up?" He went quiet for a moment. "Hm, yeah, I thought you might say that. So, I just kinda grabbed Popuri." He paused and there was a flash of pain. "...No. She did... ask. But no." He smirked again. "Yeah, thought you'd say that too. Popuri's her own person, she can do what she likes. She's old enough to make her own decisions."

The phone was passed back to me.

"R-Rick?"

"Is he making you happy, Popuri? Is he treating you well?"

I swallowed.

_There will be no hints of the truth._

"He's treating me the same as always."

I had managed, in my own way, to bypass the rule. There was so much I wanted to convey to him, so much waiting to burst from my mouth. My eyes locked with Caitlin's, and she didn't take her eyes off me, inspecting.

"Now," she said softly.

"Rick, we're... We're getting married." _Please understand._

There was a hiss at the other end.

"I wanted to do it at home... With you and mama..." _Please forgive me, Rick... I didn't mean to leave home so long..._

"Y-you're coming back?" There was such a warm surprise, a desperate wonder, that the truth was almost pushed out of me.

"Yes," I whispered, and the agony curled around my heart and sealed itself there, forever. I was never going home. I would never have my wedding. I had to sacrifice myself for them. "...Will you be there, Rick?"

There was a pained silence. "Popuri, I'll always be there for you. Even if I have to put up with him. But why did you... why did you have to _leave_, Popuri?"

Rick was close to crying. I could hear it in the way he clipped himself off, the way his voice was tight. There was no noise in the background. The Inn was completely silent.

I swallowed and remembered back to that moment on the beach. Why had I gone? Why had I, the chicken girl, voluntarily transformed myself into the red eyed horror I was now?

"I couldn't watch him leave. Not again. He ripped my heart out every year... It was just one time too many. And... I wasn't satisfied with what I had, Rick, I couldn't let him slip away... I was... Lonely. You have Karen, and Jill's happy now, and Ann and Cliff are falling in love clumsily, and Gray's stopped being such a dark cloud and he's with Mary... Elli and the Doctor are practically already together, they've always been... I wanted my happy ending."

I couldn't look at Kai's face. He had to know I was talking about him. Caitlin wasn't looking at me anymore either... I had fulfilled my duty and though I was telling the truth, it wasn't endangering their plan. If anything, it was helping them.

"...Are you happy?"

I rolled the answer around on my tongue, in my mind, but I found there was nothing I could say. I myself had no idea. I wasn't completely happy. The battle had been fought, I was a bloody mess... And I still didn't know if I was the victor.

"I'll see you at the wedding." I took a deep breath. "I love you, Rick. I love you and I miss you, so very much. Tell Mama I love her too and will be there soon."

"Popuri-"

I put my finger over the glowing button they said would end the call. Caitlin's glazed eyes came back to me, and she nodded.

My brother's voice went silent.

* * *

They spent the afternoon teaching me what I would do, what I would say when we reached the island. They told me a story about how Kai had proposed, they gave me pictures of Kai and I on multiple sunny beaches, dreams and lies of places we had never gone. I had no idea how they had made them, but it looked just like us, smiling and laughing without a care in the world.

"Remember," Caitlin had told me slyly, "You're crazy in love with Kai and he with you. You should hold hands and kiss and make googly eyes at one another. You're about to get married, small town style."

We wouldn't get married.

I had been so sure of that sacrifice then.

* * *

He came into my room again, the night before we left.

The darkness was humid and warm, and his rough hands were patting my head before I pulled myself out of a twisted, strange dream.

I had been running to my mama, and the closer I got, the more her legs healed, until she was completely well. Her cheeks were rosy and she laughed as she held out her arms. But just before I could hug her, she turned, and with a flash of her white, perfect legs, she was gone, running from me with her newfound health.

"...Mama?" My voice and mind were foggy in the dark stillness. He had brought me to the surface of my dreams.

The tang of pineapple filled the room.

"Go back to sleep," he soothed quietly, but something in the impenetrable dark of his face made me jerk myself awake.

"Kai," I murmured, and he let out a humming sigh.

"We're getting married... Tomorrow." I struggled to see the melting chocolate brown of his eyes, and I found my tired mind couldn't make the effort.

"We're not," I let out into the air, and his hand stopped moving on my face, settled itself so it cupped my face and hair. I couldn't live that dream, as much as I longed for it.

"She won't do it," he said slowly, one thumb moving to my jaw. "The Harvest Goddess wouldn't kill you."

"She has to. I'll make her, I'll let her."

His other hand found one of mine in the dark.

"Nothing I can do would change your mind and stop you from praying to her?"

I shook my head weakly, pink hair flailing against the pillows.

He leaned down, the purple bandanna almost touching my forehead, where his own hand rested. Warm breath fell on my face.

"I'll cook for you," he said suddenly, his voice joking, but strained. "And this'll help your mother. Your town can survive without the Goddess, we're fairly sure... Other places have before."

It was hard to think with him so close.

"Please, Poppy?"

He was trying so hard to be that traveller, that free spirit of a man. But he was doing it for the organization, now, and that wasn't him. He couldn't mix his two selves.

I clutched his hand and Kai himself was my strength in refusing.

"No. I can't."

The breathing stopped for a moment, and then there was a quick murmur.

"I'm sorry, Popuri."

He shattered my world and gave me a new one that would soon collapse into dust.

His lips pressed to my own, soft and hesitant, but steady. He knew what he was doing in that moment, even if I did not. I was so caught up in that affection, the most I had ever received from him, that I did not notice his hand disappearing from my cheek.

I didn't know anything was amiss in my suddenly glowing world until the prick in my neck and his shuddering jerk away from me smashed it to pieces.

"What..."

He wrenched his hand from mine, and in the dark I saw the glint of a needle, what the Doctor had used once before on me, when I was young.

I wasn't too naive to ignore the spreading numbness from where he had injected me.

"I can't let you do that."

I was breaking again, but this time I felt a new emotion bubble up through my heart's cracks, as hot and red as the night.

"What did you do?"

"You're going to fall asleep." His voice was crumbling, breaking just as I was. "You're not going to wake up until we give you another shot, when we get to the beach."

I sat up, grabbing him even as he tried to pull away.

"You kissed me to remove the threat to the plan." The words shook.

He didn't answer.

"Am I just a key to Mineral Town to you too? So they can find out what I'm thinking and manipulate me?" I had entered the adult world, and I was falling fast. I couldn't climb back up the wall to mindless bliss. The medicine he had injected was climbing through my muscles, worming its way up my neck into my mind to numb that as well. "Has this whole stay... those years on the beach... all this time when I've been so scared and you've been here on and off... been you pretending to actually care about me? I should have known when Caitlin pushed this... I should have known... Why am I so stupid? Why am I such a baby? Why can't... can't I... ca...n't... I..." The medicine had a hold on my lips now, my tongue. It was slipping its cold fingers into my conscious now, dragging me into the dark. I forced it to speak again, to finish. "...ha...te...yo...u...?"

My eyes still worked for moments more, and I cried silently.

I couldn't tell if Kai was watching or not.

I wouldn't wake until Mineral Town's doom was sealed, until they were on the island and the ocean couldn't stop them anymore. Until they had Zack and other innocents trapped and in danger, so the Harvest Goddess had to choose between them or herself. They would die a quick death, or a slow one without her influence on the island. It was a decision no one should make. I remembered the way Jill, now the Goddess, had looked at many of the townspeople. Even if she was distant, she still... loved... th...em...

* * *

He watched Popuri's eyes flutter closed. The hand that had betrayed her Kai let wrap itself into her cold, lifeless palm. His other traitorous hand moved to her cheek, burned by her tears but refusing to change. He didn't have much time. They'd be expecting the two of them at dawn... He would have to come up with something to explain to his father why she was unconscious. He couldn't know what Kai was thinking and what Popuri was planning.

_I love you_

Kai flinched at the memory. It had been in practically this same scene that she had told him that for the first time.

He had wanted to kiss her once before it all fell apart, before Popuri possibly would never kiss him again. If that helped Kai's agenda at the same time... He had to do it.

It killed Kai to do that to her, but he had seen her determination before, in the eyes of the destined dead. She wouldn't stop, his Popuri, until everyone was happy but her and that wretched organization. Popuri would kill herself for her family.

That was something Kai would not allow, organization or Harvest Goddess or family or bloody anything. He had reached that horrid point where good and evil meant nothing, where he drowned in shades of gray and let his own selfish motives guide his every action.

Popuri would not die, and even if she hated him by then, he would make her happy and safe with him. If she found that impossible... then so be it. He would remove himself from the picture then, and only then.

_Why can't I hate you?_

He selfishly hoped that she continued to find that impossible.

The covers slid off her thin form, and she was unnatural as he lifted her up, no sturdiness in her frame. It had to be a result of the drug. He could hardly see her breathe.

The tanned older, darker man just shook his head when his son appeared with the girl in his arms, unconscious and unable to defy.

"He loves her too much," he remarked to Caitlin, who was stiff at his side.

"All the love in the world wouldn't make what he's-what we're- about to do right."

* * *

_A/N: Well, there it is. There'll probably be only two or three more chapters, hmm. I hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! Well we finally got to see the point of view of someone other than Popuri... That was just weird. Kai's so... depressed. Not like everybody else isn't. Anyway, here we go!_

_ekoaleko- Thanks a bunch as always for your review, you always cheer me up! Still, I'm a bit concerned about the story and not quite sure where I'm going after End. As I've said before, I'll definitely finish. Mwa ha, I LOVE it when people are torn! Thank you so much for reviewing, it's awesome to have your feedback. Hope you liked this chapter! _


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N: Weeell. Excuses mean little at this point, but I truly am sorry. I hope you enjoy this chapter (pretty dang long, ain't it?) and thank you for reading!_

End 6

_Light travels faster than anything else. We can see the stars, and dream of them, and feel as though we are close to the light. Close to the end, close to the heavens, even though they are lifetimes away._

* * *

I awoke on the dock, with a prick reminiscent of the night before. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, matching the ocean waves, speeding up from a dim nothing to a solid, pulsing life. I was alive, and for the first sickening time in my life, I found nothing to be more terrible than that fact.

Caitlin pulled the needle from my neck and observed me with curious eyes as I trembled violently. She threw the needle carelessly into the ocean beside her, inches away from us. The sky was gray and storming, angry. It did not want these people here. They could not belong here; they could not be standing on the beach. But they were, against all of nature, because of me.

Kai didn't even seem to belong anymore, not in the gray shadow of the sun. The wind was cold and freezing; summer had transformed into winter. The impossible was occurring, even though I knew I had been gone for so long, and that fall had to have happened... but it had gone by without me. It was a quick death.

He snaked an arm around my waist and another impossibility broke reality.

I slapped him and backed away.

Caitlin hissed in surprise and fury. They had thought their plan had worked, they thought I was still a child crying in the dark. But I had broken into the true bloody world, as dark as my child's womb but nowhere near as safe and comforting.

"If Won and Zack see any of that behavior," a sudden deep voice interrupted, "We will be forced to dispatch them. Do you understand, Miss Chite?"

Kai acted as if nothing had happened. A confident grin was on his face, and as Won and Zack exited their cabin, his arm was lightly holding my waist once more, his hand squeezing my shoulder. As though he could comfort me.

The sight of these familiar people, especially Zack, was almost too much.

"Popuri!" He called, a strained smile crossing his moustached face. "Thought you'd never come back! Just about broke Lil- your family's heart, it did. But here you and that... rascal are." It was probably the warmest welcome I would receive.

"Hey, Zack. Wow, never thought I'd see this place in Winter. Man, is it cold!" His tanned face glowed in the cloudy, surreal light of the sun.

Zack turned then, and what I saw behind him made the tears spring fresh to my eyes. I didn't care about the plan, I wouldn't do it, couldn't do it...

I ran to my brother, my protective, obsessive, precious brother.

His arms only wrapped around me once I had thrown myself at him, breathed in his familiar scent, that of the chicken farm, of mom and dad. His embrace was light, unsteady.

He didn't want to hug me. I had lost everything with him, years and years of banter and love and trust. A fall I had never seen had killed our relationship in an early frost.

"Popuri," he said, and I pushed my face into his blonde hair.

"I missed you," I whispered, because I knew if I spoke, it would become gasping sobs. I quivered in the arms of a stranger who I used to know just as well as myself.

He set me down and turned his attention to the traveller whom I had finally understood. I thought he might kill him. I had imagined him blowing up. If he exploded at mere visits by an innocent chicken girl to her traveller, he would surely react with at least a punch to this dark, unknown kidnapper. It was my last sliver of hope, the last piece of resistance to their flawless plan. If Rick rejected our relationship-

He stuck out one open hand, and even Kai's expression seemed to start with surprise before smoothing itself once again into certainty. Rick's girly, white hand met with Kai's dark, large one, and with a sudden nod, they shook.

"I'm giving her to you," Rick said slowly, "But you better treat it as the best gift of your life. And Popuri isn't leaving Mineral Town again anytime soon."

_No. NO, Rick!_

He turned, back to my shocked expression, and searched for acceptance with his clear blue eyes. I shook my head, but he must have interpreted it as disbelief, because he chuckled quietly.

In one solid motion, his fist jutted out and slammed Kai in the face. The man in the purple bandanna put one hand to his bleeding nose and lip and grinned.

"That," Rick added, "Was for running away with her in the first place, you stupid womanizer. If you and Popuri... felt like you couldn't be together in Mineral Town because of me, I'm here to prove you wrong. So this time, _stay_. I'd rather have Popuri with you as an attachment than no Popuri at all."

I tried to tell him with my eyes, tried to tell him everything, but he misunderstood. He had not seen what I had seen, he had not even begun to lose his faith in everything he had ever known. Rick had gone through a horrible time the year before, but it had only strengthened him, made him harder in the end. I was weak glass, with nothing substantial left.

Rick noticed the large amount of people standing on the dock then, Caitlin awkwardly standing with her arms crossed, Maria with her hands on her hips in an impatient yet stunning pose.

"You've brought...?"

"My family," Kai volunteered, waving to them absentmindedly. "I was really hoping they wouldn't come, but you know how people get sometimes. They heard about all of... this."

The murderers, the people who had given me horror and pain for months, were suddenly cheerful, grinning, beautiful even.

Maria, Kai's sister, strutted over to Rick with an expression I could only describe as coy.

"We have heard SO much about darling Popuri's family." She lay one perfect brown hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "I am also looking forward to seeing Karen again, and her sweet little hometown. We've met before, you know, in the city. Though that was forever ago... I hope she's not too mad we borrowed her almost little sister. I was just completely shocked when Kai brought her around... Never expected it." Her gaze drifted to Kai and a burning victory trembled in her eyes. "This has all worked out for the best, though."

Rick smiled weakly. "I just kind of want to do this thing. Soon. I told Carter tomorrow first thing in the morning... Is that fine with you, Popuri?"

My head wouldn't nod, because poison was running through my mind.

I was giving up, relinquishing my hold on resistance slowly. My death had been my only plan, my only escape and solution. I had been so sure, but with that conviction gone, it was becoming harder and harder to resist that offer.

Behind Rick, I could imagine a healthy mama and a returned father. We wouldn't be able to stay on the island, no, but we could make our home somewhere else, together. We'd be a family...

And Kai and I...

I could resist him in my anger, I could reject him for a short while. But that mysterious man, that handsome and playful man, would be the one I was married to. I hadn't dreamed about him for my entire life to let go of him in an instant. As horrible as it was, I had not lied. I still loved him, and I probably always would.

Kai answered for me. "That sounds great, doesn't it, father?"

Our destruction was sealed in every one of their smiles.

* * *

It felt wrong to be so happy, so loved, in the worst of times.

Mama stood at the edge of our farm, hands clutched in prayer. Even if Rick had given up on me, Mama had waited, just as she always would. Mama had suffered and been sleepless, had gone through the same pain of my father's absence all over again. How had I been so heartless at the end of that summer to not see how I would hurt her?

People always told me I looked just like Mama. Our hair was nearly identical, and we shared pale skin and naivette. But I had become my father instead. The man who would share nothing with me. The man who made Mama cry sometimes, late at night, when she was hurting, knowing that her pain only brought her greater sadness. Her pain took her husband away.

She ran to me on her ruined legs, and I met her, throwing my arms about her and sobbing into her shoulder.

"Mama," I moaned, and she pressed her cold lips to my cheek, to my forehead. "Mama. I love you. I missed you so, so much."

She smiled for me, wide and sweet, as though a day hadn't passed. "I love you too, Popuri, my baby." She patted one hand on my back and a tear dropped from her cheek to my hair. "You've been gone a while."

"I didn't mean to, Mama," I whispered, and she hugged me tighter. "I'm sorry."

"You're back now," she smiled, her voice breaking, "You're back now and everything can be fine." She wiped one eye with the back of her hand as we pulled apart, still holding onto me with pale fingers. "Did you have fun while you were away, Popuri?"

"Ahh." I felt Kai and the others on the path behind me, and the malice there made me want to dive back into her arms and stay forever. "I..." I patted under my eyes with my hands and collected my former chicken girl self. "Every day has been an adventure, Mama." I smiled broadly, and my normally rosy cheeks, flush from crying, aided me in hiding from my mother.

She chuckled, her voice choked by tears. "I'm happy for you then, Popuri. I am so happy for my baby girl."

Then we were hugging again, and she was stroking my hair, like she used to do back when Dad first went away. I was reduced to a little girl crying in the arms of her mother, and instead of hating myself, I could only feel warm. There was nothing wrong with being a child for my Mama. As Jill had told me once, her blue eyes more despairing than usual, _Adults still miss their mothers, even when they've chosen to go away._

"Will you come to my wedding, Mama?"

"I wouldn't miss it for the whole world."

The church looked towering and unfamiliar in the dark, an immense and inevitable doom which stabbed into the final fading red of the sky.

It was night. The next morning I would be married there, when the stained glass was beautiful instead of dark and jagged, when the steeple would reach up to the heavens and the morning sun. Everything would seem all right then, but right now I could see the deadly truth in the making. I touched the cold bricks on the side of the church, and I wondered at the time where Carter was, if he was preparing for the "special day". If he had any idea he would betray the Goddess by committing the holy act of matrimony...

"Popuri."

I whirled and there he was, staring at me in the rising moonlight, hands jammed into his pockets and chocolate eyes just staring at me.

"What are you doing out here so late?"

There was no one around. I didn't have to pretend then, I didn't have to be that cheerful chicken girl that no longer existed.

"What, Kai? Were you concerned?" There was a note of bitterness. I was the shattered pile of sea glass that was truly Popuri, with sharp ends rubbed in sand and dirt and  
poison and strewn out on the beach for anyone to step on.

He was closer. How had I not seen him come so close, so fast?

"I need to talk to you."

"Th-there's nothing to talk about." My cursed voice gave away the huge part of me that hurt just to speak to him, just to look at him.

He chuckled dryly. "You're a bad actress." His hand raised to touch my hair, but fell back to his side as I opened my mouth to speak.

"I played the part perfectly, didn't I?"

He was in front of me then, his handsome face too close to bear, and I pushed myself around the corner of the white painted, peeling church, onto a small path I had never noticed before.

"I did what you wanted. I'm not dead, you win, you get your way! I'm putting on an act in front of all of the people who know me best." One tan arm reaching around me to stop me. "And for you, for you! You get off without a hitch but with plenty of benefits! You get my emotions, you get the Harvest Goddess, you get your family's approval! You keep Mineral Town in the dark about the whole deal!"

The emotions I had felt the night he drugged me were coming back, spurting up like lava through a weak earth.

I placed a trembling hand on his shoulder and pushed him away weakly, but it was far too easy for him to resist. He barely moved. One hand went to my shoulder to lock me into place.

I couldn't breathe enough, couldn't cool down with him standing there, couldn't let the lava settle into reasonable earth.

I bit his hand, but he didn't back away. Both my fists went out to hit him, but he caught my wrists and pushed them back down to my sides. My knee jerked up to collide with his stomach, but it was like nothing had happened.

He didn't care what I did. This was just another ripple in an endless sea, and it affected nothing.

He didn't care...

My forehead came to rest on his shoulder as I slumped. He tensed, bringing up his arms, but the fire had died down and left nothing but weak ashes which blew away soundlessly into the cold breeze. My arm twitched against his shoulder in one last attempt to wound him, but I couldn't. I never would be able to.

"...Popuri."

His beating pulse was strong against my ear. Another warmth bubbled up inside my heart and I cursed it with all my mind.

"What do you want?" My voice was torn. I finally succumbed, casting my red eyes away from his face. "You already have everything. What do you want now? Just take what's left. It shouldn't be hard."

His hand was warm on my face and I was so weak, too weak to bring my arm up and push him away...

"I lived there," he began slowly. He licked his dry lips and swallowed hard. "In that hole. For _years_, Popuri. I was raised there. Every day I woke up in the dark and never knew what light was." His fingers were loose and gentle on my arms, and I could have run. But he was holding me captive with the truth, and that was far better than my previous chains. "When I was thirteen, I was assigned here as a runaway child. They gave me the money for the beach house and told me to act however I wanted, but to fit in. So I... got comfortable. I let myself be who I wanted, let myself go crazy, and... Suddenly, it was all so bright. I mean, I was _happy_, and I didn't even know what happy meant at the time. And... there was you."

He stopped. His voice was unused to the story, shuddering and pausing, quiet or loud at all the wrong moments. But it was real.

"Why are you telling me this, Kai?"

"Because," his fingers gripped at his clothing, "I'm marrying you in several hours and I... and you... I didn't want it to be this way." His voice rose. "I can't let you die, I can't let you go, but I can't tie you to me. It's not... that's not the way for you to live, to live with-me. They've got their claws in me deep, and I was born in that dark. I can see the light, but I can't belong to it." He paused, breathing heavily. "Look at me." My eyes turned to meet his with a trembling fear. "You can't be a part of this. I never should have brought you to my home in the first place. If I had known..."

I wanted to think that he was lying to me. I wanted to believe that the world wouldn't be as cruel as to have him love me and then be unable to act on it. It would have been easy for me to continue in my bitter disbelief, because that's what logic and reason provided. No, the hardest thing at that very moment was to realize that he was telling the truth, and that even if he did want to protect me, to help me, to _love_ me, it changed nothing. The Harvest Goddess would still be captured the next day, I would be forever tied to the organization, and we were helpless.

His gaze cast away from me.

"I asked you," I said quietly, and he nodded.

It had been my idea and my fault. I had been given control, and I let it slip through my fingers and shatter.

"My mistake," he replied, releasing my arms from his hold, "Was being unable to resist."

"What can I do?"

That caught his glazed vision. He whipped his attention to me, gripping my shoulders.

"You'll do nothing but escape."

I stiffened as my insides turned to ice. "The village... my family...!"

"Are the Harvest Goddess' to protect. They'll survive."

"Why hasn't she gotten rid of your family already, then?"

He paused in the dark. "Besides the Goddess' restrictions on communicating with humans, my family, as you've seen, is... Dangerous. Maria is a force to reckon with. That man's protectors are bound to have supernatural powers. And Caitlin... well..." He chuckled and shook his head. "Not only is she the most powerful, but she is also the most unstable. You've seen how unreasonable and wild she becomes. She _likes_ you, because you're so innocent and honest. Imagine how she would be with someone she utterly despised."

I remembered how she had looked at that little boy. How she had called him a monster. How she had meant her every hiss and glare with every fiber of her being.

"Will they hurt Jill?"

Silence.

"She's not Jill anymore, Popuri. You need to stop thinking of her like that."

"But she IS Jill! Just because she... changed... doesn't mean she disappeared. She's still my best friend. I still love her like a sister."

"That is _your_ mistake, Popuri. You love people too much, you open up your heart and shove it places where it doesn't belong! You're like a trusting little kid who'll jump into anybody's lap, even if they mean you harm! Why can't you just..."

My hands clenched into fists, but my voice went lethally soft. "Why can't I be cold and resistant like you? Why can't I mistreat and lie to somebody I love for _months_ and never lose a wink of sleep? Why can't I grow up into a hard, heartless adult?" I wasn't crying, but I felt as if I should be. "Fine, then. I'll admit it! _I don't want to grow up anymore!_"

"Popuri-"

"I'm not leaving my family to die, and that's _final_. Don't pull any of your... your... tricks. Don't knock me out. I... I'll hurt you somehow. I'll make you feel it! I will find a way."

Even I knew the weakness in my threats. There were several fatal flaws in my plan.

"Then where have you got to go, Popuri? There's no way for us to escape all of this. You have to make a choice, right here, right now. It's either the Harvest Goddess or your family."

But I could see. It wasn't a decision of who would die and who would live. It was a question of who would die first. Just as the island and its people couldn't survive for long without its Goddess, the Goddess could not survive on a weed infested rock in the ocean. She would wither away to nothing without her followers, without their faith.

The answer came to me and slipped from my mouth without any time to be embarrassed.

"Marry me."

Kai expression was solemn. "So it's the Harvest Goddess you've chosen."

"No, no... I... um... Marry me tonight, Kai. Right now. Then... She won't come tomorrow. We can pretend we haven't been married, we can fake the ceremony, we can tell Carter something about wanting to be married tonight, and Jill will help us, I'm sure..." I had no doubt there was something wrong with the plan. Our undoing could not also be the way out.

His mouth dropped and he stared at me openly for a few moments before quiet understanding glinted into his eyes. I could swear he was almost... smirking... A sloping smile that touched one side of his face.

"We can... We can definitely do that. They don't even know I'm outside... I managed to get Caitlin to let me come see you alone. They- It'll _work, _I think. I-" a slight hesitation. "...I never thought I'd get to hear you ask me." He pushed his face into his arm and tugged on the front of his bandanna, turning away into a shadow of the moonlight.

I hadn't missed the tinge of red.

"Y-you..."

A hand behind his neck as his gaze wandered to an important branch in the swaying forest behind us.

He had blushed. I had affected him with nothing but words! I felt a giddy glow in my stomach until I realized the shadow Kai stood in was that of the steeple. This wasn't a child's imaginary play wedding. This wasn't a regular union. I was marrying Kai because there was no other way out.

I couldn't deny that I _wanted_ to...

The gigantic wooden front door of the church creaked open. Kai jerked with stiff movements and, wrapping an arm about me and my mouth, pulled me further down the path.

"Hello?" Carter's sleepy voice rang out into the night. Kai immediately let me go and stood away from me. A yawn echoed quietly and the door began to slide shut.

It was our best chance. I laced Kai's fingers through mine and turned the corner of the old white building.

"Carter!"

"Hmm?" The young priest looked only mildly surprised to see us standing there.

"I-I... May we practice the wedding? Exactly like it'll be tomorrow? The real words and everything?"

He smiled lazily and nodded his head. "It is a bit late, but of course. You want everything to be perfect for the day."

I didn't want everything to be perfect. I just didn't want the world exploding and crumbling to my feet.

Carter ushered us in and pressed an gentle force to Kai's sleeve. His hand slowly let mine go, squeezing my fingers and touching them for what seemed like a million years. "Come along now. Haven't you seen a wedding before? The bride comes to you."

They were at the altar. I could have turned then, and walked out the great oak doors. I could have left.

But it was both a necessity and an urge that made me step forward.

Carter began to shuffle slowly back towards me. I waved him off. I could do it alone. I was more independent than I had ever been before.

It was not the ideal wedding of my childhood. My father wasn't leading me down the aisle. My mother wasn't there, my brother wasn't there. They didn't even know I was planning on getting married that night. They didn't know anything about me anymore.

"Then you'll take each others' hands," Carter instructed, and I brought myself to face him. One tan, calloused hand held my right, and his left palm opened to me. I placed my own in it.

"Now, here I'll say the sacred words... For tonight we'll just skip over them..."

"Please," Kai interrupted. "I want to be reminded of everything I'm promising."

"No surprises on the wedding day," Carter murmured, patting me on the shoulder.

"I'm sure the Harvest Goddess will know the difference." My own voice spoke out into the vast, dark ceiling. _Jill. I need you. For your sake, and for everyone's. Make this real._

Carter began to murmur the phrases. Though his hands held the Goddess' holy book, his eyes closed in reverence as he spoke the words by heart.

I couldn't even listen to them. They meant so much, and I heard so little. I only saw the empty pews, the one lit candle on the altar. This was no wedding in a church. This was a funeral in the dark. Even the man marrying us didn't know there was a wedding. _Why am I here?_

"Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?"

Chocolate eyes rolled over me like a wave. His fingers tightened on mine as he shut his eyes, inhaling sharply. "I do."

"And do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

I loved him. I loved him so much. I didn't need a beautiful dream wedding to remember and feel that. Nothing but my heart needed to be present. I loved his smile and his cooking and his devotion and his teasing, his effort and the way he did anything to achieve his goals and yet his carefree attitude. I wanted to see those things every day of my life. I hadn't seen so many of them in far too long.

"...I do."

"Then of course, I would-"

"Say it, please." Kai's gaze never left my face.

Carter smiled warmly. "Impatient, are we? You'll have plenty of time tomorrow."

"...I want to hear it too," I whispered, and Carter's knowing smile faded from his white face, flickering in the small candlelight.

"Very well then." He cleared his throat. "I pronounce you man and wife. You may now kiss the bride."

Kai's nod to the preacher was confident, but as Carter turned away to shift the papers on the desk behind him, his grip on my fingers tightened. His expression was open and vulnerable for a fleeting second before he closed himself off.

"Popuri..." A pleading whisper so low the gentle preacher heard nothing. "This is your last chance to escape me. I will never be the right husband..."

"And then you'll lift her veil." Kai brushed one pink strand of hair from my face. He leaned in, eyes a flaming brown, as Carter moved the candle to in front of him and we plunged into darkness together. His lips hesitated just short of mine in the shifting shadow.

"I can disappear from your life forever after this. Just say the word. With me or without me, you will be happy." A warm breeze on my cheek. His eyes darkened, and he seemed to laugh to himself. "No, I... I'm lying. I promised I wouldn't do this to you, Popuri, I promised myself and you. But I've never been one to come through on my promises, have I?"

My family, my friends, were there with us as I considered in my heart just what I wanted and what I had to do. But as my lips caught his in a silent response, they faded from the pews, except for one. Kai leaned away from me at first in swift surprise, but within moments he was back, hands reaching up to my cheeks and sliding down to my neck, desperate, kissing me as though everything else in life led up to this one moment, a single breathless touch of our lips. Like nothing would ever be the same. This was the kiss I had imagined, this was the kiss I had wanted for years, and more.

A hot wind came through the closed windows and blew out the single candle in the church. Carter felt his way into his back rooms in his search for new matches, but his assuring calls telling us to stay still were unheard. My best friend glowed in the black, green and white and heaven rolled into one.

This kiss ended differently than the last. There was no forced separation from him, but a slow release. My hands were dropped as I was pulled gently to his shoulder. He rested his head on mine, watching our only spectator with a pained curiosity. He still smelled like pineapples and the ocean, but it was dimmed from miles of distance and time. The scent still lingered and curled in the smoke of the candle, and then my former sister opened her mouth.

"Thank you for doing something which should never need be done. You've saved a Goddess and an entire village. You're quite the hero, Popuri." The blue gaze moved away from me. "Making a sacrifice of your happiness for someone else's is something only an adult would do. You've really grown." She stood, green hair swirling about her in a perfect madness, but she seemed to lose some of the regal beauty. "And as Jill... I am so glad you love him, and he loves you. I... I just want to see you content, Popuri, and I'm sorry you had to suffer to gain it for yourself. You are mature in all the ways that count."

She took a step forward and in a blink her glow was in front of Kai.

"As for you... Treat her right, or I'll get you."

He chuckled into my hair and clutched me tighter.

"I don't doubt it for a minute, Miss Harvest Goddess."

"That's Mrs. to you." She grinned. "I've attended more than just your wedding recently."

"Breaking all the rules?" Surprise tinged his tone. I myself was shocked at their conversation... They had talked very little when Jill had been the town's farmer.

"I make them... I can twist them a little. And in your case, Kai, I will. You can stay here, if you'd like. At your precious beach house. You saved us as well. I'm very into forgiveness these days. I will never separate someone from their loved one." Her form flickered. "Never."

"I'm only leaving if she puts me on the boat herself," he murmured, "And even then only if she enlists Rick to carry me on board."

"Don't smile that way," the Goddess said quietly, "You look as if you're going to just fall over and die. A newlywed should appear much more joyful. Don't you agree, Popuri?"

Laughter bubbled up inside me and I released my husband to embrace my best friend. "I missed you," I laughed and cried all at once, "I missed you and everyone else. I was so worried... I was so helpless!"

"Ohhhh, Popuri," she sighed. She rubbed my back and ruffled my hair with all the warmth of Spring. "You are never helpless. You change people with that heart of yours. Look at this former criminal here. Look at that red haired woman who let him out to come see you. See me, standing here at your wedding, not being assaulted by a group of murderers." She almost laughed, and months of her as a farmer and as my best friend washed over me, so close to pulling me under.

"Speaking of that," Kai interrupted from behind me, "My family will be furious if the Harvest Goddess does not make an appearance. I assumed you'd take care of everything from there."

"Yes, surprise tactics always work the best. Because of your actions tonight, there is no holy ceremony being performed... Meaning I can spill a little blood if need be. They think I'll have to come peacefully... Far from it." Her expression was grim as her holy light flared. One white hand came to land on Kai's shoulder. "After this, Kai... You'd better live a content life, you understand? You are also a member of this town."

His mouth began to tremble. He turned away from the both of us. I reached out for him, but Jill patted my shoulder.

"Don't be concerned. He's overjoyed right now. Face us, you stubborn traveller, and stay in one spot."

He was smiling. Even in the dark, his cheeks were a bright red and his grin was wide.

"Now go take your wife home. Separate and don't be seen together. I suggest you act like nothing's changed."

I only had to act for a few hours longer. The relief swept over me, and as I closed my eyes tight, the only glow in the dark flashed from the room. The back door clicked open and Carter's shoes padded on the wooden floor. Kai put one arm around me and we walked with Carter from the church.

"Thank you, Carter." I had to say something. He had married us, even if he didn't know it.

"Have a good evening, Miss Chite," he replied serenely, and the great oak doors creaked shut. The church faded into the night as he went to sleep with the rest of the town.

Kai laughed.

"What is it?"

"You're not Miss Chite anymore."

I felt as if I had been slammed into.

Like my mother, like a billion women before me, I was a woman bound to a man through my heart and through the law. People could look at me and call me a child, but I might have one soon enough.

I stopped walking and Kai blinked from two steps ahead.

"I'm married." I inhaled and he moved close to me. I stared up at him and I saw reflected two red eyes brimming with tears and adoration. "To you."

His lips curled to one side in a teasing manner. "Regretting it already?"

I shook my head and laughed quietly, as a tan hand reached for mine.

In the dim streetlights, a figure moved.

Kai jerked his hand back and the traveler was gone, gone, gone, disappeared and out of my grasp in the short span of a moment.

Her red hair was an ugly brown in the dark. She stepped towards the two of us and Kai was in front of me.

"I found her." His voice was choppy, but he refused to be desperate.

Green eyes slid over us and up to the sky. Her fists clenched and Caitlin shook, but her expression remained soft and ready to be molded into any emotion.

"Cait-"

"Quiet. I know what you've done."

She was bleakly pensive.

"You would have been happy," she spoke quietly, a tired smile coming to her lips. "You would have been happy, and we still could have gotten that woman."

"My father would have never let us be happy. We would have been miserable." One hand went up to clutch at his face, his bandanna, himself. "You know that, Caitlin. Look at you."

Her lips trembled weakly into a sneer. "You think I can't tell how much I'm suffering? You think I don't feel it eating through my heart? You think that I want to destroy a whole town of innocent people?"

"Then why did you do it?" My own voice rang out. I couldn't see Caitlin's face, because Kai only stepped closer to me, a barrier. "And she's not a bad person either!"

"Who do you think," Caitlin began blandly, "Made your mother the way she is? Who do you think ruined my life? Who has control over everything- who has complete and utter power?"

"She didn't... make my mother sick," I said weakly, "That's impossible."

"Then who did, precisely? Don't you get it, Popuri? They're horrific beings who suck the life force from a town and use it to feed themselves. But are they punished? No! They have control over the town!"

"Well, what could you plan to do with her power?" Kai broke in. "You'd only go to destroy another town, to rule over another place! _You are the same as them!_"

Caitlin's eyes glowed black and became part of the night. A cloud passed over the faintly glowing moon.

"I know," she said finally, and her voice clutched at emotion but failed to keep it in. "I know what I am."

"Caitlin," I began softly.

"But no matter how much power I possess," she said, "I intend to die someday, and to leave no one behind in my stead. I will die honorably, and I will purge the world of my kind."

Then she walked into the night, away from us, down the cobbled path and into a deeper blackness, alone. I would never have the courage to be Caitlin.

"Who is she, Kai?"

Kai stared after her blurred figure.

"Some people aren't as lucky as you are, Popuri." The irony of his statement almost made me laugh, but the sight of the empty dark where Caitlin had been left me somber. "When magic happens, good or bad, not everybody comes out unscathed. Even the most beautiful of fairy tales has gruesome details that are often...skimmed over." He shrugged. "Caitlin was unlucky, and when she was weak, my father kidnapped her."

"She hates him," I murmured, and Kai just shook his head.

"That's an understatement." His expression shifted. "And yet, she fervently agrees with everything he does... Caitlin is absolutely insane. Sometimes, I feel even my father doesn't know what the future holds for us..."

"He doesn't dictate our future anymore."

Surprised, his eyes darted to me, and then back, closing as he let out another chuckle. I bit my lip at my complete bluntness.

"No, he doesn't. Thank the Harvest Goddess."

* * *

"They are married?"

"Happily."

The man sighed and looked old for a fleeting moment. He leaned back in the chair and stared at the torn calendar on the wall of the fading farm house.

"Excellent."

The green eyes glanced around the deserted room.

"It's been a while since she lived here."

The older man swept a finger along a dusty dresser.

"She's never coming back."

"Look," the redhead murmured absentmindedly, "The clock's stopped." She tapped her fingers lightly along her legs as if to make up for the lack of ticking.

"Quiet." Caitlin went still. "Did they suspect anything?"

She gave a wan smile. "Kai is quite happy to be free of us."

"I thought I raised him to be smarter."

"Rougher, perhaps."

They sat in silence.

"Do you think she will hate him someday?" His dark eyes were bleak. "I do not think he would be strong enough to survive that."

"He'd survive," Caitlin replied simply, "He'd survive because he's a fool and believes he has the ability to stop us."

"Then continue. As long as I still have my son, this mission will be finished. Caitlin, are you prepared?"

"Yes."

"And when this is all done?"

"I will die properly."

"Good. You have the thing I told you to retrieve during the ceremony?"

Caitlin held up a wriggling cloth bag, dripping wet and sprouting pathetic green shoots.

"Of course."

"Then we may continue."

_A/N: Thank you for reading! I love everyone who's here! I hope you've enjoyed!_

_ekoaleko- The church of Mineral Town already has a wedding scheduled for tomorrow, but the day after that I'm sure Carter would be glad to marry you and the plot, haha. Thank you so much for following these stories. Your support is invaluable to me! I hope this chapter has made you happy! _


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N: I feel a summary is in order, because I hardly remember my plot, so I doubt that you do. _

_In the last chapter, Popuri and Kai came back to town with the organization. Popuri fears the worst, because she knows that her wedding will expose the Harvest Goddess and town to harm. However, Popuri and Kai secretly marry the night preceding their wedding date, allowing the Harvest Goddess to take action during the "ceremony". They believe they have thwarted the organization, but it isn't the end yet._

End

Chapter 7

_Nothing ends, and nothing begins. It is just a constant flow, incessant time pricked occasionally by events that humanity believes to be points of hope or demise- beginning or ending can be attached to either. It is the individual who determines which._

I had missed sunrise in Mineral Town, with the squawking of the chickens in their pens and the rosy glow of the sun creeping over the far mountains. I usually walked to the Springs to see it, to breathe it all in; today, routine simply couldn't exist, not for me, not even with my mother making eggs downstairs or my brother humming off-key as he moved about.

I was married. I was married not to the man of my dreams, but to a man so different than I had expected, more darkly complex and stunningly strange, a real man. I was hoping I had become a woman to match him.

My boy from the beach was already awake, perched lightly on the edge of my bed and watching me unabashedly with one hand cupping his dark, tanned cheek. I almost started at the sight of him and gave him a look of surprised horror, but he smirked.

"Oh, no, Poppy. I have rights now, if you recall. I can greet you in the morning, wake you up, spend the whole day with you, if I so please." I flushed. He paused. "Also, if you scream, Rick will probably come to his senses and run upstairs to murder me." How he could speak so lightly, so jokingly, about something that now seemed so close, that word 'murder' that had touched me with one freezing finger, I would never know. My lips pursed themselves into a near pout. I had to stop doing that. He raised an eyebrow and then turned away before quite purposefully rotating back. His eyes glinted.

"...Yes?" I squeaked. I sounded like a child found in a game of hide-and-seek.

He kissed me then, and it reminded me briefly of that sorrowful night, the night of our first kiss, before every thought I had burned away to a warm black. All I knew were the calloused fingers in my hair, the perfect haven my covers provided around me, the sharp and twisting aroma of pineapple, and the way Kai made my heart clench in my chest. Every once in a while, he would pull back in the slightest way to take me in, to watch me cringe in embarrassment at my own happiness.

"You're so young," he muttered on my lips in one of these sudden breaks.

"Sorry," I replied, and he frowned. I knew, because I could feel it. Feeling a frown was so different from watching; so personal. It made your own mouth want to follow.

"I'm saying it," he enunciated this with one hand resting plainly on my neck, "Because I appreciate it." A touch of his lips on my cheek. "Because you make me feel young." A breath. "Understand?" I gave a trembling nod, and he dove in again.

Rick decided this would be a good time to come upstairs. I had little doubt as to what _his_ thoughts would be like, were he to find Kai and I kissing. In fact, he had probably come up intending to stop something of that nature, having let Kai into the house and into our private rooms. He had no idea of what had happened just the night before, less than a mile away, at our church. Kai's lips slowed upon mine and then pulled away. I sighed as he backed off, the air rushing between us, and he groaned.

"Popuri," he stated warningly, his voice oddly upset, and then Rick's feet clattered on the final step, "That isn't fair."

Kai stood with a tug on his bandanna, and the door opened.

"Oh, you're awake." His voice still held that awkward tone, that resigned separation. It stung and rattled in my ears.

"Rick!" I was too happy, my tone too bright. For all Rick knew, I had said goodbye last night and then done nothing but sleep. His eyes widened, but something in his face hinted at a small smile. I felt something warm glow in my chest. He was my brother after all, no stranger to me.

"Is something exciting happening today, Popuri?" Then again, Karen had changed him since I had left. He still enjoyed teasing me, but now he sounded so smooth, so assured. I opened my mouth, but he didn't wait for the answer. "Mom wants you downstairs to start the preparations. As for you, Kai, get out." Kai snorted and Rick rolled his eyes defensively. "I'm helping you out. You weren't around for the other weddings; the women are fierce."

I stood and pushed on one of his arms with a slight smile. "Rick's right. You aren't supposed to see me until later."

We all moved downstairs, and Rick and Kai went for the door.

"Is your sister going to come to this, too?" Rick asked suddenly. Kai stiffened and cocked his head to the side.

"No, I think she's busy at the church today." There was a hesitating silence on both their parts, and then Kai shifted and broke into speech again with a grin. "She's excited; she's got that feminine love of weddings. I'm sure you understand." He jerked his head towards the parlor.

They lapsed into silence again, and then I realized why. Kai and Rick never said more than five words to each other without argument- there was something awkward and tense about them, an uncomfortable acknowledgment of change. I felt my heart swell. They were trying, and now that the dark shadow over us had passed and I could breathe, it seemed all the more beautiful. I pressed a quick kiss on Kai's cheek, and he blinked at me in a distantly startled way before stepping out of our door.

Then it was Rick and me, together in silence, with our mother dutifully cooking away in the background, sitting on her high stool that our father made for her.

"You and Kai," Rick blurted suddenly, pushing his glasses up his nose. I jerked a little in response.

"Yes...?"

"In all of those months. I just... I have to know. Did he ever do anything that you...?" His voice perpetually got lower and lower, and in my obliviousness, I still didn't understand. "That you didn't like," he finished off lamely, with a brief glance towards the kitchen.

I was torn. It was probably normal for couples to fight, and they had told me to be real. "O-of course," I replied. "I mean, it is me, and Kai, and we're not perfect, you know-" Rick was staring at me in open shock.

"I don't think you understand what I'm asking, Popuri, and if you do, this wedding isn't _happening_, do you understand?"

"What? Rick!" The same brother that had sworn he would accept us was now openly fighting once again- at the one moment when I needed to marry, needed to finish this. I should have known.

We were being too loud. Mama tapped her wooden spoon on the pot. "Are you two getting hungry?"

"Just a minute, Mom."

And we were outside, just like that, still in our pajamas and our arms immediately wrapped about us in the cold breath of the morning.

"I'm asking if Kai respected you." I raised an eyebrow, and he groaned. "You're going to make me say it." He blew hair out of his eyes, and he let out the last word in the puff of breath. "Physically."

I felt the tension leave the air, and I almost laughed. "Oh, goddess, Rick." I buried my face in my hands. "Yes! We hardly even..." He prodded me on. I was actually talking to my brother. About this, of all things. "Kiss."

He let out a sigh. "Thank the goddess. I thought I would have to become my brother in law's mortal enemy once again."

"Heaven knows I wouldn't want you two strutting around in the chicken ring squawking at each other like old times," I teased, albeit hesitantly. It felt awkward, and we both wrapped our arms around ourselves. Not each other.

"Like old times," he echoed thoughtlessly.

I tapped my boot in the dirt. "Thank you for... accepting him." _For accepting me, when I came back._

He looked pained, his eyes crinkling behind his glasses. "I want to be honest with you. I may never behave towards him like a true family member should, but... Goddess, Popuri. I can't lose you- Mom can't. Every time I think I might our family might have safety, no, happiness, it falls from our grasp. If that means I have to smile at that undependable flake of a boy and walk you down the aisle to him at the end of it, I will."

He reached for the doorknob.

"I asked him to, Rick," I whispered, the words catching on the hot shame in my throat. "Kai never wanted to hurt me that way, to hurt our family that way, but I _begged_ him. And he loved me, so much that he couldn't let go."

"He's weak," Rick grit out between sharp teeth. "He's weak if he puts himself before you so easily."

I caught his sleeve. "Is it weakness, Rick, to love me that much? Does love make someone weak?"

He looked through the door with his narrow eyes, and I knew exactly what he meant.

"Sometimes it does."

I let his clothing fall from my grip. "But I love him, I really love him, and we've... we've fixed things. Everything will be better now. You have to trust in that." I looked from my brother's perspective, and I saw myself, a young maiden playing with her dolls at the heels of love and fate, and knew that I was wrong. It was not over, it was not better, and Rick couldn't trust me, not yet. That overprotective stance of his was quickly reappearing, his shoulders stiffening and face reddening.

"It will be different after the wedding," I promised weakly. "You'll see. Things will change."

He swung the door open wide and stepped through, giving me one last, curt reply. "They already have."

But my brother held the door open for me, and together we ate scrambled eggs and excitedly went over plans with Mama. We weren't children. We were adults, siblings, capable of overcoming any distance, any pain. We would trust each other again someday, perhaps for the first time, trust each other not as babes do the spoons that feed them but as living, breathing, fallible people.

We'd made mistakes. I had yet to apologize and fix mine completely. That was what would change. I looked forward to it, that chance for my brother to finally accept me.

All of the women came over that afternoon in a cluster. They scratched around our house for a while and hesitantly fawned over me. I knew with every downcast glance that Mama had been saddled with the burden of closing their gossiping mouths. My name had probably been giggled more times in the Square in the past few seasons than it had been called when they tried to find me. The most painful part, though, was that Karen wasn't even there- Rick had to forgive me a little that easily, but Karen did not. She would be my sister, and her temper and my huge mistakes were going to be a hurdle for us to cross.

I don't know how Mama managed it, but she got them to leave for the final few steps, so we could be together alone.

"You're beautiful, my baby girl," she said in her soft voice, my face cradled by her smooth palms. "I'm so happy that you are home." I felt myself lean into her touch. "Kai will cherish you. I've watched you grow together for years- he loves you, more than he realized for a long time. Rick isn't exactly bursting with joy, Popuri, but I want you to know that I _am_. I know you'll always come back to me."

Mama finished helping me put on my wedding dress, her own wedding dress, and then she needed a few moments to herself. That was when the Harvest Goddess came.

"I'm sorry I did not get to be here for this," she said in her smooth voice, her glowing face dimming. "I know that it is significant, in weddings."

I swallowed, and felt my lips curve into a trembling smile. "You're here now. You're my maid of honor, you know."

She responded with her own curve of the lips, a spark, green hair shifting into chaotic, assimilated beauty.

"And you were mine." I blinked and opened my mouth to question, but she shook her head. "Don't attempt it, Popuri. Even after all you've done, you are human, and there is no way for you to break through a lock on your memory. It was just a dream."

Even looking deep into myself, I knew she was right. I had never suspected, never realized that anything was lost, that such a thing existed to be lost. So I let it go. There were so many things in my life that I could not even imagine to be real.

"Thank you for coming," I said instead, and she shook her head.

"I came to warn you."

I felt my insides turn to ice. "I thought that-"

"They're not fools, Popuri. They know when allegiances are bound to break. They expected this, and they are prepared." She glanced towards our door, and I knew we had only a little while before my mother returned.

I ran it through my mind. "Did they take someone hostage? Is everyone all right? Did- did they bring in more people?"

She paled. "They stole something of mine while I was occupied by the wedding."

Objects had meant little to Jill, and I bet they meant less to her as the Harvest Goddess. "Can they hurt you?"

"No." I felt my shoulders relax inside the soft lace of my gown. My mother's knock sounded on the door.

"They could kill the Harvest Goddess, Popuri."

My hands flew to catch her, to pull her in, as though a tiny chicken girl could protect her. "But she's-you're- immortal!"

She snorted and gave a miserable smile, something little befitting my usual image of a goddess. Kai wasn't a prince. The world outside Mineral Town was not a glowing beacon of all things exciting and beautiful.

"Hardly." With that, she began to turn into smoke, and I noticed only then that she was already partially made of it. "I can only hope they don't know their own power. I've already spoken to Kai. He's on his way here, and your husband is furious." Then she was gone.

The door burst open and in came a smiling Kai, his hand on the small of my mother's back. His purple bandanna clashed terribly with his suit and tie, which merely hung about his neck.

"Oh goddess, it doesn't even come off for the wedding, does it?" I asked, surprised by my own sense of humor. I watched his face as it did an awkward dance- first hooded confusion, a dawning understanding, then pointed rage, and finally, laughter.

"I knew something was wrong," Mama remarked absentmindedly. Kai guided her with ease to our couch before moving to me, sweeping me up, white lace and train and all.

"This is such bad luck," I whispered into one warm ear. I could feel his breath pressed deep into my neck.

"I think we've got enough piled up already, thank you. A little more won't tip the scales." There was a pause, and he stiffened all around me. I could literally feel him abandon all of his joy. "We need to leave."

My arms pushed him back so I could look into his eyes. My mother smiled on in the background. "I told you I wasn't leaving yet," I said carefully. "We're not done."

"But we'll be late," he replied lightly. _For the boat he prepared for us_, I realized dimly. He meant to follow through with his previous plan, to run away, only the two of us, and face the world with the blood of my family at our backs.

"I stand where I've always stood." He knew that I had pledged my death to Mineral Town before. I would do it again.

He swore softly. It wasn't in English, but it was all I could imagine that he was doing. I looked past him, to my mother in all her serenity and eyes defined by red, and I knew what she had been doing outside when Kai had found her, because it was her dress I was wearing, the one she had married Daddy in.

I would not leave her again.

"Is Rick already there?" Mama nodded. Kai looked between us, and knew me, in all my childish hope and strength. He did not look dejected, and his brown eyes lost their melting fury. He offered Mama his arm.

"Allow me, Mrs. Chite," he said with a charming grin, and then we walked to our church, the three of us, a sight to see crossing the town square. A bride and groom already wed, taking their mother to what they hoped was only a church and not what lay outside of it. A graveyard.

Carter greeted us at the door, only mildly surprised. He held it open for Mama and pleasantly gestured her inside, to where the whole of Mineral Town waited, an army dispersed among them.

"He already thinks the worst of me that a priest can politely believe," Kai said in explanation. He shrugged. "He thinks we're pretty unorthodox." He caught the door with his hand and made to move inside.

"I love you," I said, and I meant it. "I want to grow old with you, and raise little chicken girls and boys and be frightened only of dogs and bugs."

"I love you." His voice nearly broke as he said it, nearly choked him, and in the past this would have disheartened me. Now I just knew that it was because he meant it, too. "I wish all we fought about was jewelry and Rick and how unfairly attractive I am." I made to smack his shoulder lightly, but I ended up just moving my palm over his arm, feeling him through the starchy, rough fabric. I knew the glazed light in his eyes. We were going to die, and he wanted to kiss me, like we were two teenagers that met secretly at a beach house, enveloped in the comfortable warmth of summer. "See you in a minute, Poppy."

The wooden door creaked shut, and there was silence. My brother gave me his arm. "Thank you for being here," I told him, and he brushed his thumb over my hand.

"Stop thanking me," he replied, his voice an anchor.

And when the organ sent joyful shivers through the silence, we opened the door and stepped into the mouth of the church.

* * *

Maria was not in the doomed crowd.

She didn't hate her brother. She hated that he had found someone, and that she never would, because she was a selfish bastard of a woman. Her father welcomed it, her father used it, and he judged her harshly for it.

The Harvest Sprite with her was just as pathetic. He had already tired, weak from years of separation from anyone to whip him into shape. No farmers recognized the ways of old anymore, not since the last farmer of Mineral Town had become its goddess. He was integral to Mineral Town, he was part of its spiritual life, and he had been trained to water plants. Maria had been trained to murder.

The wedding was just a show, an attraction to give easier access to all of Mineral Town. When the Goddess appeared, they would strike.

* * *

"Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?" Carter was smiling at us both so peacefully.

"I do."

I felt an odd sense of safety in those words. The ceremony was nearly over, and nothing had happened. Nothing would-

Jill was in my ear at once. _Get down. Get down RIGHT NOW._ I dragged myself to the floor and took Kai with me. Heat passed over my head, and I ripped off my veil to better see.

Caitlin stood in the middle of the aisle, something thick and black and metallic balanced under one arm. Another man stood with her, a thinner and smaller version of the contraption held tightly in his outstretched hand. Caitlin threw her head back then, a terrible noise that could have been laughter at one point in her life.

"Got you."

Jill swept over me then, straight through me, and the very town shook beneath us as she flew at Caitlin. I felt myself begin to breathe. It would be over, it would-

Kai yanked my arm hard enough to dislocate the shoulder, and I tumbled, wedding dress and all, in his direction. There had been a noise like fireworks that split the church, and it happened again and again. The wood of the front table splintered behind me and bent. The church was filled with the sound of screams, screams I knew belonged to my family, the whole of Mineral Town.

"What was that?" I gasped. Kai pulled his own black metal contraption out of his suit and stared at me incredulously for a moment before turning his focus into the crowd. There was a sharp roar of thunder, and a man that had been approaching us fell back to the floor, blood blooming on his dress clothes.

"What was _that_, Kai?" My voice was shrill.

"That," he replied, turning and aiming again, "Was a gun." Another man slung across a pew, unmoving. I stared at him in horror, and he rolled his shoulders like the whole situation could just fall off of them. "Oh, don't. They're not dead," he apologized without conviction. "My gun isn't loaded with actual bullets. Goddess, they really kept you locked up in a chicken pen for your entire life."

"Oh, I'm sorry," I managed to fling out of my mouth, unsure if it had been sarcasm or honesty that made me speak.

"Get behind the front table with Carter," he ordered in response. Carter himself was already on the floor, blacked out. And my body listened, even when my head felt dizzy. I would have stayed there, but I couldn't listen to the sounds of my family thrown in the middle of a war, I couldn't just hide. So I stood, and I looked.

Zack had my mother. Even with her clutched to his front by one hulking arm, the man was fending off anyone that came near while simultaneously trying to shove his way through the church doors, which were locked. It wasn't working. Karen and Rick were against one wall, close to me, her body wedged with and protected by his. Though I knew my brother had wanted to come to me, he had Karen's hands gentle and soothing on his face, her mouth softly moving against one ear. _Your brother was a werewolf._ He had something worse to worry about.

Kai, my Kai, was in the middle of it, his gun a constant spatter of light and noise. The rest of the town was scattered, and over the crescendo I could hear little Stu's sobbing, Gray's furious and inappropriate rage, Barley's hushed consoling. I couldn't hide. I had to do something, but what on earth was I capable of doing?

Maria came through the window then.

"Harvest Goddess," she called, and even though her voice was soft, wrapped in smug calm, I knew she had been heard. "Look what I found."

She had an odd little creature that hung from her hand by its colorful coat. It wiggled unsuccessfully, its lips moving to cry, "Miss!", and Maria shook it till it didn't move anymore.

_They stole something of mine while I was occupied by the wedding._

"Stop your assault," the beautiful woman warned. "I said **stop**." There had been a warmth in the room, a light that hung above the center that spun and gave me hope. It disappeared, and then the Harvest Goddess was in the center of church, in the flesh.

"Don't," she said, in a voice that could have been a plea. "Please. There's already been enough blood. This will be all of it, if you kill him."

Maria smiled.

"That's what I wanted to hear," she said with a sigh, and then there was a gun in her hands. "You can't survive without your sprites. So, Harvest Goddess?"

My friend just shook her head, slowly. "I have people I need to protect. I do not have the time to deal with you, or the right to give you my power. You would abuse it. So the Harvest Goddess will die." Her eyes flashed. "But I die _slowly_. You can be sure that this town will thrive for another long time."

Then she was gone again, and I realized that while they spoke, I had moved to Maria. She had guards, but their gazes and weapons were trained on the goddess, and a little girl passed through without a second thought.

I had to mean something.

With Maria's gun unwavering in her hand, I ripped the sprite from her grasp and placed him on the ground.

* * *

They had accounted for the werewolf that walked his sister down the aisle. The wedding was during the day, on a night when the moon was at its weakest. They accounted for an unrestrained and angry Harvest Goddess- the sprite ensured some weakness. They accounted for the man that had betrayed them, the unawakened Dark Presence, the blind Seer, a failed experiment, the goddess that refused her power, a girl on the verge of creating whole worlds and her vessel-like guardian. They accounted for every magical secret that lay buried beneath time and effort. Kai's family had prepared for it all, prepared for this moment for years. They would wipe Mineral Town off the map somehow, destroy the magic that threatened so much.

Yet they hadn't expected Popuri Chite, human in every aspect, human and young to the core, a girl below a pawn, a black and white square to be moved over- no, a grain of wood in the table to set the very chessboard upon- to get in their way.

* * *

I recognized it now as a weapon, and that weapon was pointed at a creature I hardly knew to exist. But the Harvest Goddess needed him, and she was distracted, trying to save the whole of the town, and I was nothing.

So I moved between Maria and the sprite, shielded him with my very body, and waited for her to fire.

Maria did. I thought I knew pain at the place Kai had come from. I had merely watched pain from behind a glass, and now I was pain, and it was me.

She must have shot me somewhere important. The sprite was crying, raindrop tears, but I still blocked him, and he was tiny. Maria moved and shot again.

Then she was gone, just gone.

Jill's voice thundered into my sleepy consciousness. _"You spilled a hero's heartblood on my holy ground."_

There was light everywhere, and I had to be dead.

But breathing still hurt- everything still hurt or was tinged with numbness, so I couldn't be dead, not yet.

Kai's voice was all I could hear.

"You just moved them? To the lake with the Kappa? _Really? _Are you insane? They-" I didn't hear the rest, because it shattered into a senseless, deep howl. Then he was with me, my bright husband, his hands and breath. I didn't have much breath, so I reveled in his. "The Doctor," he managed, hoarse. "Get the Doctor!"

"She's shot in the heart," a voice replied, despairing and clinical all at once. "I can't do anything." I think he was moving me, but I was slipping, my body seeming farther away.

The Harvest Goddess was with me then, just pure life. Harvests bring life, and that's all she was.

_You were already a hero, Popuri, and that gave me power when you sacrificed yourself. You saved us again._

I could only look down at my own skin.

_I can put you back,_ she told me, _But it will hurt so much to be in that body, Popuri. It's damaged, and I can't fix all of it._

It was warm here. It was life enough here. But it wasn't Kai, and we had only begun. We had only married yesterday, and I didn't want to die a child. I still had so much growing to do.

_I can live a damaged life_, I told her. _It's worth it._

She was quiet at that. _You wouldn't be the first in your family to believe so._

So she put me back, shoved me, and I was pain. But I also felt Kai's hands, his lips, his hope. I clutched at my pain, waiting, and then I felt Kai's tears, too.

"How in the Goddess' name does she live?" I heard the Doctor breathe.

"Exactly that."

And then it was dark, but it was home.

* * *

I awoke on a white bed in a room I had never seen before. My first inclination was to panic. Kai's family had won, and we were back in their compound.

"You're overdoing it, Poppy," a voice warmly inserted. It was Kai, still in a rumpled and torn suit, the purple bandanna still perched flawlessly upon his head. "We won. We're at a hospital in the city. The Doctor is good, but nobody was ready to perform heart surgery at a clinic."

I searched for his hand in the sea of white covers, and his found mine. "Heart surgery?" I questioned weakly.

Fire burst in those brown eyes of his. "You were shot."

I bit my lip. "Oh, trust me, I know."

His fingers trembled on mine and then he was gathering me up in dark arms, delicately as an egg shell.

"They said it was a miracle from god," he murmured, "They said it should have ripped your heart straight through. But it went through a whole portion of your rib first, and scratched the surface of your heart tissue. You hardly have any scarring."

"I think she shot me twice," I remembered, as uncertainly as someone recalls a faint dream.

His hands were gripping my hair, a bun of pink strands that I myself had never made. "Your leg will never work the same."

I was the child of one. I knew better than to use the word cripple.

"Can I walk?"

"In time." I sighed, and noticed only then the monitor that matched my very heartbeat, a slight noise in the background. The city was indeed strange.

"Is everyone alive?" He pulled away and made a humming sound. "Yes. Their death wasn't the goal my organization had. The townspeople don't even remember." The Goddess did that, I guessed. He winced. "...Except for Rick. He went wild, and the Goddess isn't ready to throw more at him right now. He is going to make you a happy widow."

He smiled weakly, but I grinned right back. "He always did swear that you were going to break my heart."

Kai groaned, but then he stood. "Your brother is just outside. He's talking to Lillia on the phone." He stuck out one hand. "So I'm saying goodbye now."

"I would appreciate your help against Rick, you know. But if you want to wait until he leaves, I understand."

He gently waved his outstretched hand. "For good, Popuri." I stared at him, red heatedly locking with brown. "If you want to fall in love with somebody else, feel free to pronounce me dead." I heard my heart monitor speed up.

"I thought we were in agreement, Kai. This isn't about anyone else- you don't care about what your family thinks, and you certainly don't care about what Mineral Town thinks! I thought- I knew- you loved me." I wasn't going to take that hand, wasn't going to say goodbye.

"I thought I loved you too," he told me lowly, and the tears formed nearly instantaneously in my eyes, "But then I let you get shot. _Twice_, Popuri. And they'll come after me- that wasn't everyone from the organization. So because I thought I loved you, I am going to stay away from Mineral Town, and let you live. You were gifted this. Don't waste it."

"I don't _care_ if you're leaving for honorable purposes," I snapped through my watery eyes, astounded at my own harshness. "I know how that works, Kai, don't you _dare_ tell me that you know how that works _better than me_."

He was left with nothing, just an open mouth and tears nearly forming in his own eyes, his arms refusing to reach for me. I swung my legs over the edge of my cot and he faltered, trying to support me. He came close enough, closer than he had wanted, and I had him, because I knew that my Kai was weak, and I was selfishly exploiting it. Through all of the wires and the ever sounding alarm of my heart, standing on my one good leg, I kissed my traveler with everything I had. He had meant to steady my center, but now he gripped my hips, merged his breath with mine, let me melt his iron will-a will that broke all boundaries and did what he pleased- with our heat. I kissed him on his neck, kissed him on his shoulder, behaved like a wife instead of a crush, and he couldn't help it.

"We are married," I fiercely reminded him against his lips, even my words another form of a kiss, and he shuddered.

"_No_, Popuri," he breathed, trying to separate, but I dragged him back and kissed him harder, harder than my body could take. My heartbeat was replaced by something louder, something more troublesome, and I was distracted enough for Kai to maneuver me back into bed. "You are a pain," he assured me, his breathing heavy enough to make me flush, knowing that I had been the cause. "You are an utterly stubborn-"

Rick burst into the room then, flanked by nurses and a doctor. They visibly relaxed at the sight of me.

"She woke up, that's all that caused her fast heart rate," the nurse supplied. I was so happy to see Rick, more than happy, but they didn't understand that I was losing Kai. I couldn't have them here.

Rick came closer to us, as the nurses and doctors left to retrieve obligatory charts.

"Get out," he said suddenly to Kai, abruptly and quietly. "You heard me. You talked to her and the debt for protecting us is repaid. And don't think that I don't know _exactly_ what you were just doing to my sister. So don't ever come back." We were nearly returned to the beginning, a darker echo of it.

"I was just on my way," Kai agreed. "Goodbye, Popuri. And thank you, for everything. You are quite the chicken girl."

He was leaving, but that didn't mean the end.

My father had left me, my family, and for so long I had loved and hated him, because he couldn't have loved me, to have left. I knew it deep within my bitter little child's heart, knew he had invented two orphans, and hated that I loved him still, despite it all. I hated that I still wanted to please him, the man who had left me. I hated that he had etched me permanently into the rocks of Mineral Town as the little girl so desperate and willing and alone. I hated Rick's overprotectiveness because it didn't belong to Rick, it belonged to my father, and now everyone else in the whole of Mineral Town felt they had to offer it, like he had torn his love into shreds and forced them down everybody else's throats with a dose of pity. My father had meant for none of that. He had loved my mother, my brother, and me. My mother had been sick, and he had seen no other option. So he left. I didn't have to forgive him for it. There was no malice to be forgiven, just understanding to be gained. I wasn't my mother. I didn't have to wait.

"I'll follow you," I promised to Kai's back. There was technology in this city, telephones in every corner and ways for people to contact one another. I wouldn't have to leave Mama, I wouldn't have to chase after a miraculous dream. "I'll follow you until I find you. And this time, you will come home with me."

Rick growled sharply, looking laughably angry, his whole face reddening. Kai merely looked stricken, gripping the doorway, and then he just laughed. "I look forward to it."

"Write me," I ordered brazenly. He passed a hand over his head and grinned, and I huffed. "One day, I will see what your hair is like beneath that ridiculous purple bandanna, and I will make you regret every second that I have had to wait."

He tugged on it, a motion I had come to know as nervousness. I blinked. "That's probably not a good idea," he admitted with a half smile.

I paused.

"Oh goddess, I have never seen you without that bandanna. You even wore it to our wedding." Rick snorted, but it couldn't spoil the revelation I was currently having. "_Kai_. You are surrounded by gods and monsters and magic. It is no _accident_ that your bandanna is permanently attached to your head."

He winked, and Rick sputtered, inputting his own opinion. "Popuri, what on earth are you talking about?"

"My husband has some magical weapon or god or something hidden underneath his headwear and he never bothered to tell me!" I had half a mind to get out of bed again and chase him down right now.

"Your heart rate is going up again," Kai noted quietly.

"Your heart rate's going to go down very quickly very soon if you don't get out," Rick retorted sourly.

Kai nearly followed through. He turned, a traveler at the beginning of a new journey. "You'll just have to catch me to find out, won't you?"

It was a challenge. It was a promise. I gladly took him up on it.

"I will. This isn't the end."

Then he was gone, my traveler, gone till the summer that I found him, and all that was left behind was the sweet taste of pineapple still in my mouth. I had made a difference. I had looked out onto the cold heart of the world, had whispered into it with my small voice, and I had given meaning. Even without him, even without anyone, I was still Popuri, and I would live on and appreciate every breath, every moment of it.

* * *

Everyone in Mineral Town had forgotten.

They had forgotten the face of their attackers, had forgotten what happened after the vows at Popuri Chite's wedding, and most importantly, had forgotten what the Harvest Goddess had done for them.

Elli had forgotten perhaps the most important thing of all.

Because even when cradling her brother safe in her arms behind a thick wooden pew, she had seen. Others had stared straight at Popuri Chite's dying body and had cried, but Elli had _seen_. Like a baby finding its own fingers for the first time, Elli saw, and understood.

Elli also knew that she shouldn't be able to see, not like this. She was torn apart by the knowing, by the seeing, all at once. And even though the Harvest Goddess could look back at her, could see her heart, she saw only Elli's fear, and not her mind. Fear looks the same in anyone, and Elli had something expected to fear in the church that day. She didn't know what she took that day, what future pain was planted.

When Elli walked from that church, when she happily took her brother's sticky little hand and her grandmother's soft one and walked away none the wiser, not knowing that she had _seen_, something more than knowledge was lost. It wouldn't be found for a long time, and then it would be sharpened by time. It would be sharpened so it could cut. It would be sharpened so it could kill.

* * *

_A/N: I just really want to thank everybody that supported me in this story. It's been a while since I started this series (like, a ridiculous 5 years), and I literally pulled an all nighter and cranked this out, now that I'm home for the summer. I wanted Popuri to be fulfilled. Thank you for being there to read it, to join in that. I hope you enjoyed the ride. I also know, looking back, that my writing style has changed. By changed, I mean literally shot in the face and regenerated as something else. I hope that change wasn't too much. Reading my own writing is like reading somebody else's stuff. I'm like, whoa, when did that come off of my fingertips? There's no way I wrote that! As is probably evident from that ridiculous cliff hanger I've gotten in the habit of writing, there WILL be another story. The first chapter's already written (haha, before this one was, anyway) and it should be up soon. _

_asian- Aw, thanks, I'm blushing (no, seriously). I'm so glad that you know my series! Waiting over! _

_liz- I am super glad that you like my plots. Maybe you can explain them to me sometime, haha. I promise that I will, eventually (not quickly), finish everything that I begin, because I absolutely hate it when good stories are left untold. Every time my favorite authors never post another chapter, it is yucky sadness. So! It is done! _

_Jagsrule5- You are absolutely making me glow. I am so glad that you've been following me for that long! If you've read the other stories, you should appreciate all of the sprinkled tidbits (GOD I have been planning End for the bloody longest time- if you've read the first in the series you'll know what I mean), but I've tried to make it readable no matter what- let me know if I haven't. I hope this chapter was up to par with the wait! _

_ekoaleko- You've been my oldest supporter. Your reading, your responses, mean the world to me, and I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate it. Thank you for everything. _

_Also, I didn't realize it till it was said and done, but I made Kai into Quirrel. I am laughing my face off. My SECOND face._

_So, my lovelies, it's the end (all puns intended). I finish my stories, dang blastit. I've enjoyed my time with you!_


End file.
